Today in Pressing Concerns, I highlight new releases from Personal Space, MJ Lenderman, Mo Troper, Fake Fruit, Really From and Nineteen Thirteen. Also coming out today (March 26th) is Chart for the Solution by Writhing Squares, an album that I wrote about earlier this week. For even more new music, be sure to check out previous editions of Pressing Concerns. I’m not sure when the next blog post will be, or what it will be–I do have a few albums earmarked to highlight in the coming weeks, and it’s about time for a new playlist too.
Personal Space – A Lifetime of Leisure
Release date: March 19th Record label: Good Eye Genre: Indie pop, chill math rock Formats: Digital Pull track: North Fork Wine
Brooklyn’s Personal Space ask more of the listener than your average chill indie guitar rock band—on A Lifetime of Leisure, they have quite a lot to say. The album’s ten tracks are populated with character sketches that look at various archetypes through the band’s leftist activist lens. Some of these are obvious—the chapeau-clad narrator of “Thinking Man” is a clear take on rise-and-grind Silicone Valley true believers, while it takes a bit of inferring to connect the (incredibly earworm-y) chorus of “North Fork Wine” to the failures of liberalism to which the song’s verses refer. “Ethical” media consumption, choices of wine, biting a Greek philosopher’s style—there’s nothing Personal Space can’t and won’t put under their analytical microscope. Even when the band gets more personal, it’s couched in similar language. “Overture” manages to be affecting and relatable in its portrayal of romantic uncertainty despite its talk of “standard issue reservations”, various European tourist destinations, and of course the titular transactional way of describing human connection.
Although I can’t really test this, I don’t think you need to fall on the same axes as Personal Space to enjoy A Lifetime of Leisure—if you aren’t paying attention to the lyrics, they’re just another ingredient in their oddly soothing brand of indie rock. Musically, the album is made up of languid pop songs that don’t neatly fall into jangle pop, psych-pop, or math rock boxes. I called The Shins “chill XTC” in a different post on this site, and I like that label here too—they have a new wave sensibility but without the nerviness of that band or, say, a Dismemberment Plan. The similarly-tough-to-pigeonhole Pinback also merits a mention. Ian MacKaye and G.W. Sok have their places in music, you know, but decades of bands raging against machines and the continuing death of the myth of “apolitical” culture have opened up new ground for Personal Space to explore on the same lyrical subjects.
That is to say, despite its critical analysis-bait lyrics, A Lifetime of Leisure is less “exhausting” and more “commiseration and comfort for the exhausted”. Is the conservative cultural echo chamber featured in “Dad USA” worth seething over? Sure, and Personal Space give the song a little more bite than the rest, but they never give into the anger at the expense of completing the image. Has the flattening of the curve of time perpetrated by how we engage with social media caused societal ripple effects with which we haven’t adequately grappled? Sure, but like “A Document of Every Occasion” describes, sometimes we can’t really do anything about it, other than just kind of dissociate into whatever years-old memory is served up to us on a silver platter. It’s chill, man. I’m supine. (Bandcamp link)
MJ Lenderman – Ghost of Your Guitar Solo
Release date: March 26th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Alt-country Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Someone Get the Grill Out of the Rain
Asheville singer-songwriter Jake Lenderman plays in the dreamy indie rock band Wednesday, but under his own name he’s made an album of lo-fi, offbeat country-punk that falls somewhere between David Berman (a noted lyrical influence) and early Simon Joyner (particularly in the voice cracking of “Catholic Priest” and the singsong melody of “Gentleman’s Jack”). Lenderman is an intriguing songwriter, finding fertile ground in the sight of Jack Nicholson sitting courtside at a Lakers game or the bizarre feeling of shame caused by seeing a friend or lover’s mother sleeping. Some of these songs come off as sketches, like the 70-second “Someone Get the Grill Out of the Rain”, which quickly presents its idea and doesn’t overstay its welcome, preferring to fly by like a twangy Guided by Voices or Magnetic Fields album track. Still, Lenderman gets out the line “Precious memories are the ones that suck” before the song ends—he’s not playing around.
Ghost of Your Guitar Solo is a short album, 25 minutes and anchored by two mostly-instrumental title tracks and a live version of one of the songs, but none of these potential padders really come off as filler. The first “Ghost of Your Guitar Solo” is a five-minute album opener that’s a bit of a red herring for the rest of the record but certainly lives up to its name, while the alternate version of “Gentleman’s Jack” offers up a livelier take on one of the album’s strongest moments. The second “Ghost of Your Guitar Solo” is really the only song here I could’ve done without, and even that one works as an interlude between the last track (the beautiful, groggily confused “Catholic Priest”) and the rest of the album. Perhaps Lenderman embraced brevity with Ghost of Your Guitar Solo as a change of pace after the last album released solely under his name, a 2019 self-titled record, clocked in at over an hour. The quality of these songs, however, leaves me wanting more and hoping we hear more from Lenderman soon. (Bandcamp link)
Mo Troper – Revolver
Release date: March 12th Record label: Self-released Genre: The Beatles Formats: Digital Pull track: Got to Get You into My Life
First of all, it was incredibly thoughtful of Mo Troper to choose my favorite Beatles album to cover in its entirety. As tempting as it would be to hear him plow through the White Album, instead we get to hear him tackle Revolver: the album that’s all hits, no misses. Well, except for “Yellow Submarine”. And the lyrics of “Taxman”, I guess. Anyway, the flipside is because Troper covered this album, and because his version of it is very good, now I have to figure out something new to say about the goddamn Beatles, or at least about their songs—so here goes. Revolver is a fit for Troper’s style in that it’s a collection of unmoored-from-time guitar pop songs that could’ve reasonably came from any decade of the post-rock-and-roll era. Where they differ, however, is in that Revolver is a foundational psychedelic rock document, whereas I’ve never really contemplated doing any hard drugs to Troper’s comparatively grounded music. And while there have been horns on his records before (“Dictator Out of Work” is a personal favorite), that still didn’t explain how he was going to tackle some of the album’s more baroque material on his own. So, how he approached the psychedelic and orchestral songs was what I was most curious about upon entry.
The droning sitars of “Love You To” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” become layered guitar workouts—they both end up sounding close to the non-album Beatles tune “Rain”, which Troper includes here as a bonus track. For the symphonic songs, “Eleanor Rigby” is played entirely on keyboard, while he goes the other way on “Got to Get You into My Life”, ending up with an even busier sound than the original. I do appreciate Troper’s innovations, and it’s also a treat to hear his versions of songs already firmly in his wheelhouse, like “I’m Only Sleeping” and “And Your Bird Can Sing”. However, my favorite moments on Mo Troper’s Revolver Presented by Mo Troper fall somewhere in between, like when he soars into the chorus of the aforementioned “Got to Get You Into My Life”, or his supremely fuzzed-out but otherwise mostly faithful take on “She Said She Said”. The album closes with a reverent but distinctly Troper version of “Rain”, which despite not appearing on the original Revolver is, to me, the album in a nutshell—Troper could have tried to stick to the Beatles versions as much as possible or made everything sound exactly like a Natural Beauty outtake, but he’s too fond of these songs to be content with either narrow view.
Also, all proceeds from this album are being donated to Defense Fund PDX and Austin Mutual Aid. (Bandcamp link)
Fake Fruit – Fake Fruit
Release date: March 5th Record label: Rocks in Your Head Genre: Post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Old Skin
Oakland-based four-piece band Fake Fruit offer up an economical version of post-punk on their self-titled debut album. They cite Pink Flag-era Wire and Pylon as influences, and musically they capture the same wobbly punk sensibilities as those bands, as well as the newest generation of acts drawing from that well (“Milkman”’s vocal chant and tight groove could be the foundation of a Parquet Courts song). That’s all well and good, but where they really set themselves apart is in frontwoman Hannah D’Amato’s lead vocals and lyrical interjections. She has no problem twisting and contorting her words to fit the music, trading in repetition and wringing the most out of a line via changes in inflection, but she still manages to pack a load of meaning into the lyrics that remain. “Lying Legal Horror Lawyers” gleefully begins with D’Amato shouting “Let’s talk about men’s rights! Let’s talk about their plight!” and the titular phrase. It’s not a linear narrative, but it’s evocative and it’s not hard to figure out where D’Amato’s mind is at from there. Likewise, the eventual refrain “I stuck my neck out for you, I did / It was a swing and a miss” from “Swing and a Miss” tells you more about what’s going on in a pair of sentences than most lyricists would give you in a full-length song. Fake Fruit is at their best when the band serves up appropriately punchy music for D’Amato to do her thing over, like the 60-second runaway train of “Old Skin” and the kiss-off “Don’t Put It on Me”. (Bandcamp link)
Really From – Really From
Release date: March 12th Record label: Topshelf Genre: Emo-jazz, math rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Quirk
With their third, self-titled album, Boston’s Really From take a musical turn towards the expansive, opening up their unique blend of jazz, emo, and math rock in new ways but never letting this get in the way of their most cutting and focused lyrics to date. In the record’s first trio of songs, we get both the down-stroked alt-rock verses of “Yellow Fever” and the ambient floating of “Apartment Song”, but the mood-setting of the former and the punchiness of the latter both make sense in context. “Yellow Fever” in particular benefits from the dexterity, with co-lead vocalist Michi Tassey grappling with the anger and hurt with being fetishized as an Asian woman in the verses, only for Really From and Tassey to both take a step back in the chorus and reflect on the broader questions these experiences pose. Really From grapples with identity throughout its length—prominently in “Try Lingual”, which is about attempting to learn to speak the language one’s parents grew up speaking, and in other vocalist Chris Lee-Rodriguez’s harrowing acoustic closer “The House”, which is unflinching in its portrayal of familial racial dynamics growing up in a half-Puerto Rican and half-Chinese household.
Really From is about moments as much as anything else. It’s about when the freewheeling, jazzy body of “Quirk” gives way to Chris Lee-Rodriguez’s stark proclamation that “Your father did this, your mother did too / The fault’s not on them” with minimal musical accompaniment, or when Tassey hands the lead vocals over to Lee-Rodriguez right before the second and somehow even more powerful climax of “I’m From Here”. A band putting together something this musically adventurous always runs the risk of getting lost in the weeds, which would be a shame here given what’s going on underneath in Really From. Moments like those, however, showcase just how potent this band can be when it all comes together—and come together they do. (Bandcamp link)
Nineteen Thirteen – MCMXIII
Release date: February 26th Record label: Self-released Genre: Hard rock, noise rock Formats: CD, digital Pull track: Post Blue Collar Blues
Dayton, Ohio’s Nineteen Thirteen make dramatic heavy rock music that comes fully-formed on their debut EP, MCMXIII. Even though they employ traditional guitar-bass-drums instrumentation, their stated influences of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Western film soundtracks are reflected in the sprawling song lengths and conceptual turn-of-the-century industrial class themes that tie the record’s four songs together. Both the band’s name and the title of the EP refer to the year of the Great Dayton Flood, and the immediate and prolonged aftermath of this natural disaster is where vocalist Brett Hill finds fertile writing ground. In album thesis statement “Post Blue Collar Blues”, the band surveys a mid-American wasteland, Hill growling “Oh, we’re a damnable lot / Raised in abandoned factory plots” over a doomy stomp. The clouds don’t part after that, with Nineteen Thirteen then serving up the nine-minute World War I horror story “Dog Fight”, and “Old Face on the Wall” looks inward to no less ominous of a result. Though a new group, the members of Nineteen Thirteen have cut their teeth in various heavy metal and hard rock bands for multiple decades at this point, and it shows on MCMXIII. The EP (which, at 26 minutes, is longer than the MJ Lenderman album from earlier in the list) confidentially offers up crushing riffs, eerie atmospheres, and exhilarating build-ups, often right next to each other. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: March 26th Record label: Trouble in Mind Genre: Space rock, psychedelic prog rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Geisterwaltz
If phrases like “space rock odyssey”, “modern prog rock double LP”, and “psychedelic saxophone” pique your interest, then this Pressing Concerns is for you. Chart for the Solution earns all these descriptors, and more, over its 71-minute interstellar voyage. Writhing Squares seem to be aware that, if they’re going to lay down an album that shoots for the moon (so to speak), then they’d better come prepared with a capable toolbox. That’s no problem for the Philadelphia duo, made up of Daniel Provenzan (vocals, bass, and percussion) and Kevin Nickles (vocals and all the other instruments, more or less), who have plenty of tricks up their collective sleeves. Chart for the Solution is a sonic battlefield of saxophones, clarinets, synth blasts, flutes, harmonica, and roaring vocals that doesn’t stop its turrets from firing for nearly the entirety of its two records.
We’re thrown right in the thick of it from the very beginning of the album. Opener “Rogue Moon” is, in its first half, a motorik welcoming into Chart for the Solution’s terror-dome that then resolves into ambient weightlessness for the second part of its 11-minute runtime. After that, we get into what I think of as the “otherworldly hit singles” portion of the album. “Geisterwaltz” has saxophone squalls punctuating a memorably psychedelic swirling riff. The brass on “Ganymede” is a bit friendlier—is there an E Street on any of the moons of Jupiter?—but its breakneck tempo and growling vocals turn it into a rather aggressive dancefloor number. “The Abyss Is Never Brighter” speeds by in under three minutes, led by distorted bass playing from Provenzano and a flute-based assault from Nickles. The latter theatrically savors the titular line and the rest of the song’s refrain, which sets up the album’s theme of apocalyptic concern—or, perhaps, a lack of concern.
Chart for the Solution is an album that probes the outer reaches, and it doesn’t flinch from giving the bad news to us mere mortals. “The Library” isn’t musically divergent from the songs before it, but it stands alone as a spoken word piece, with a narrator that sounds like some sort of cosmic horror nature documentarian. Under a tick-tocking rhythm section, he emotionlessly imparts “I suspect that the human species is about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure” (The “library” here is the Universe; like any good prog album, you have to learn some new terminology). “NFU” is on its surface pretty similar to the bite-sized warped garage-psych nuggets of the album’s first side, but Dan Balcer’s piercing harmonica helps the instrumental bubble over into one of the most overwhelming, cacophonic moments on Chart for the Solution. And then there’s “The Pillars”.
Like “Rogue Moon” before it, “The Pillars” uses synths to build towards its epic length, and like the opening track, it also devolves into formlessness in its second half. However, while “Rogue Moon” is frantic from the get-go, the 19-minute “Pillars” takes its sweet time getting there. Despite its absurd length (it apparently takes up all of the physical album’s Side Three), it’s one of the musically simpler songs on Chart for the Solution, letting the synths do most of the work. This opens up room for some of the most memorable vocal moments on the album. “The Earth was destined for fire! Salvation: a funeral pyre!” bellows Nickels from the middle of the brimstone fury, before the dread-inducing industrial soundtrack of the song’s second half kicks in.
The album ends with an eight-minute victory lap instrumental “Epilogue”, giving the listener time to reflect on what, exactly, they just went through. Making a direct comparison for where Writhing Squares have landed (or, not landed at all) with Chart for the Solution is pretty tricky. The most obvious one is classic progressive rock like King Crimson, but there’s also a post-punk aggression that for myriad reasons you just don’t usually hear on albums like this. Bands like Upper Wilds might have the same cosmic aural assault, Trouble in Mind labelmates Sunwatchers similarly pull brass and other jazz sensibilities into this kind of rock music, and the Terry Gross album from earlier this year operates in the same lofty stratosphere of ten-plus minute song lengths. But all of this rolled into one package? Writhing Squares are on their own planet. (Bandcamp link)
Pressing Concerns is back! This post caps off a busy week for Rosy Overdrive–I reviewed a playlist I originally made in 2019 on Monday, and on Wednesday I reviewed Shoot Out the Speed Cameras by John Sharkey III, which was initially slated to be included here before it became apparent that I was going too long on it. Three posts in one week! That probably won’t happen again anytime soon. Anyway, today I’m rounding up new albums by Gaadge, Mal Devisa, Russel the Leaf, and The Death of Pop, as well as new EPs by Friendship’s Dan Wriggins and En Garde.
Be sure to check out previous editions of Pressing Concerns for more new music. Consider this the first of a two-parter that will conclude around a week from now, when I’ll talk about a couple albums coming out on March 26th plus a handful of releases I didn’t end up having room for here.
Gaadge – Yeah?
Release date: March 19th Record label: Crafted Sounds Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop Formats: Cassette, CD, digital Pull track: Creeping Weeks
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Gaadge are a swirly rock band that started as the project of Mitch DeLong, but has since evolved into a full-band effort. Their debut album, Yeah?, finds Gaage carefully crafting a wall of sound, only to kick it back down throughout the record. Their reverb-heavy sound nods to, among others, the revved-up hard-shoegaze of Ovlov and Swervedriver, the chaotic noise pop of The Spirit of the Beehive, and the tender lo-fi melodies of Guided by Voices and Alex G—often in the same song. The first (full-length) song “Creeping Weeks” starts with a dreamy intro and doesn’t transition to the mid-tempo rocker it eventually becomes until nearly two minutes into the track. They continue similarly with the relative restraint of “All You Can Absorb”, but then throw in “Do What Now”, which finds the band furiously playing over DeLong’s intoned vocals and landing somewhere pretty close to a punked-up My Bloody Valentine.
There is a tradition of grandiosity among this kind of deeply-layered, sensory-overload music, and Gaadge dip their toe into that with the six-minute psychedelic rock odyssey of “Thrill”, which doesn’t reinvent their sound so much as expand on it. As if a little nervous at their audacity, they bookend the song with two sub-two-minute breather songs written by bassist Nick Boston. It’s an odd choice, but both of them are actually pretty good in their own right, particularly “Murphy’s Law”, which starts off as one Yeah?’s more subdued moments until the band lets loose in the second half. The true “breathers” on the album might actually be the straightforward alt-rock of “Flipping Shit” and “Holy Formers”—songs that still work without (or, at least, with less of) the bells and whistles of some of Yeah?’s busier moments. All in all, I’m left with a strong first impression of Gaadge—they’re a band that’s already nailed a particular sound, but DeLong and company give the songs a solid foundation underneath and hint at a duality they could explore in the future. (Bandcamp link)
Dan Wriggins – Mr. Chill
Release date: March 12th Record label: Orindal Genre: Alt-country Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Mr. Chill
Dan Wriggins has gained modest notoriety as the lead singer for the Philadelphia “ambient country” group Friendship, who have made three strong albums over the past half-decade. The five-song Mr. Chill EP is Wriggins’ first solo release, and it’s drawn from the same recording sessions as his single “Dent / The Diner” earlier this year. Mr. Chill is not too far from his work with Friendship—that is, it continues the minimalist twang the band explored on 2019’s Dreamin’, and Wriggins’ distinctive warble is as front and center as ever. If anything, the EP is even sparser than his band. There’s no bass on the record, which means a good portion of Mr. Chill is filled out instrumentally by only Wriggins’ acoustic guitar and fellow Friendship member Michael Cormier’s steady drumming, with occasional organ and piano stabs, also by Wriggins.
“All Things Being Equal” is a classic Friendship-style number, with Wriggins stretching out his vocals for emotion and ample use of empty space to let the words hang out in the open. “Season” is even better, treading into darker territory and opting for “cold” rather than “chill”. Wriggins’ writing is as strong as it’s ever been, turning out several memorable lines over the EP’s 17 minutes. “I can tell you stuff I can’t tell anyone else / Because you don’t threaten to help” from the title track cuts like a knife, and “Everything’s a clue to a green detective” is a hell of a thesis from “Yellow Bricks”. The best example, however, is in “Lucinda on June Bug”. That’s Lucinda Williams—Wriggins explains that the titular phrase is meant to be read in “the way an egghead might say ‘Tolstoy on morality’ or something”. It’s a roundabout way to write about taking comfort in one’s favorite records in a personal rough patch (“Prince on crying doves” also gets a mention). The song then sums everything up with a take on a famous George Bush quote (“Read my salty lips: no new love”), and if that’s not an indication of the quality of songcraft here, I’m not sure what is. (Bandcamp link)
En Garde – Debtors
Release date: March 19th Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Post-hardcore, emo, math rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Our Hands
I’ve talked about some stuff in Pressing Concerns that could be described as “emo-tinged”, and some albums that flirted with post-hardcore, but I’ve yet to dive in too deeply until Debtors. But by the midpoint of this five-song EP, when I got to the zippy math rock riff, tasteful screams, and stomping chorus of “Self Poortraits”, I was more than ready. The debut release from Akron, Ohio’s En Garde, a duo made up of vocalist/guitarist Ross Horvath and drummer Andy Hendricks, is nearly ten years in the making, having been tracked by Hop Along/Algernon Cadwallader’s Joe Reinhart in Philadelphia in 2012. Despite the long gestation period, Debtors thankfully does not sound too over-worked or labored-over. This isn’t to say the EP is slight or lightweight, either—just that En Garde stays remarkably consistent over the record’s five songs, making any chaff hard to identify.
There is a sort of biblical drama to the lyrics and feeling of Debtors that evokes cult heroes mewithoutYou, among others—titling your song “Cri de Coœur” and playing with that scorched-earth style will even give a lyric like “Boy scouts have never seen a knot like the one I have in my stomach” some serious heft. En Garde establish a few other recurring motifs throughout the EP—closing track “Tightropes” takes the math rock hints of “Self Poortraits” and stretches them out for the full length of the song, while both “Self Poortraits” and “Edentulism” feature odd, left-field, brief but remarkable instrumental breaks. It gives the whole thing the vibe of two collaborators throwing ideas at each other and creating something unique and lively, so it surprised me to learn it was Horvath and Hendricks’ first time working together. (Bandcamp link)
Mal Devisa – Wisdom Teeth
Release date: March 2nd Record label: MalDevisaArt Genre: Alt-soul-rock, hip-hop (among others) Formats: Digital Pull track: JD’s tune/The Spring
Wisdom Teeth arrived early this month with little fanfare, which seems to be Mal Devisa’s modus operandi at the moment. However, “little fanfare” doesn’t apply to the music within at all—there’s a bit of everything here. While Devisa is no stranger to genre-hopping (I’m thinking of “Raised in the Pit” and “You Are My Sunshine” coexisting on 2018’s Shade and the Little Creature), Wisdom Teeth is a particularly dynamic album, with forays into roaring rock, soul, hip-hop, synthpop, and jazz. Album opener “JD’s tune/The Spring” is a breathtaking dramatic guitar workout that recalls Double Double Whammy-era Mitski. Right after that, however, we get “Round Midnight/Pack for Free”, a noise pop song led by a simple, piercing riff as Devisa’s vocals fight for equal weight (“One ear doesn’t work. First attempt at Recording myself” reads the song’s Bandcamp description).
The road keeps twisting from there. “Melanin Like Sunrise” makes a musical reference that most readers of this blog will recognize and combines it with lo-fi beats and a verse by Amherst rapper Kyalo, and then Devisa herself spits in “Old Intro”. The jittery groove of “The Room Is Spinning/Rough” is hypnotic, and shockingly doesn’t even get to the main hook until around the song’s final minute. The strongest point of the album is a three track run in its second half, starting with the bass-and-keys soul number “Dangerous” and continuing into a straight cover of the jazz standard “You Go to My Head”. The third of the three, the triumphant “Skyline Arms/Reach Out”, with its lifting keys and some of Devisa’s best vocal work, would be an obvious closing song. Devisa doesn’t make it so easy, however, instead ending Wisdom Teeth with the ruminative, minimal bass-driven “I Could Tell” followed by eight minutes of a drum machine loop. It’s not an album that’s willing to slot itself neatly into one category, but Wisdom Teeth will give you a lot to enjoy over its runtime. (Bandcamp link)
Russel the Leaf – Then You’re Gunna Wanna
Release date: February 26th Record label: Self-released Genre: Psychedelic pop, power pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Classic Like King Kong
I have to touch on a couple things on Then You’re Gunna Wanna that lifted Philadelphia’s Russel the Leaf out of the “bands I’ve sort of heard of” pile straight onto this list. The first is sole member Evan M. Marré’s high, ageless voice, which reminds me of Michael Doherty from Another Michael, or Chris Farren. It’s not particularly en vogue to sing like this (unfortunately for me), but it works very well with the kind of music that’s featured on Then You’re Gunna Wanna, which brings me to point two. Marré is a producer, you see, and has accrued several personally eye-catching credits, including albums from the just-mentioned Another Michael and the mentioned-earlier-in-this-post Friendship. As Russel the Leaf, Marré trades in the type of busily beautiful baroque pop that’s frequently associated with producer-musician studio rats. Brian Wilson is an unabashed influence throughout Then You’re Gunna Wanna, and several of the songs also sound like they could’ve come out of a pissing match between Andy Partridge and Todd Rundgren. Marré invites Beach Boys comparisons right from the start with the nautical croon of “Sailin’ Away”, and the strings and vocal theatrics of “Skipping School” giddily continue them. As strong an opener as “Sailin’ Away” is, Marré has the tunes to keep Then You’re Gunna Wanna from being top-heavy, with the pure pop of “Hey! (It’s Alright)” and “Classic Like King Kong”, the confident spooling out of “’Til I Hit the Ground”, and the two-minutes bag-of-tricks indulgence that is “California” highlighting the rest of the record. Like the best albums in this vein, Then You’re Gunna Wanna has grown on me significantly since I first heard it, and as of press time it’s still rising. (Bandcamp link)
The Death of Pop – Seconds
Release date: March 19th Record label: Hidden Bay/Discos De Kirlian Genre: Indie pop, psychedelic pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Fade Away
The Death of Pop, a London duo made up of brothers Oliver and Angus James, filter several decades’ worth of psychedelic music through their own lens on their latest album, Seconds. The record falls somewhere between a softer version of nü-shoegaze acts like Gleemer and post-Animal Collective 2010s hypnagogic dream pop, with similar shades of the Beach Boys and Emitt Rhodes. The Cleaners from Venus also appear to be a big influence, which, given how frequently I cite them in these Pressing Concerns pieces, seems to be a good move for bands who’d like to be covered on Rosy Overdrive. Where they differ is in songwriting—the Jameses don’t attempt to ape Martin Newell’s rural English pastoral vibes, instead using similar instrumentation to conjure up a busy, modern late-night-metropolitan feeling.
“Fade Away” sets the stage immediately with sparkling jangly guitar, lilting synths, and copious amounts of reverb. It’s chill, it’s easygoing, not afraid of the dreaded “soft rock” label, and you could easily slip some saxophone into it—and The Death of Pop do, seamlessly, on the album’s title track. “Once Good” sticks out among the album’s second half—here, The Death of Pop ask for your attention just a little more forcefully, with its self-conscious dance pop hook and its simple, effective lyrical plea. And if you like that, “Ready for Us” does it all again nearly as effectively. Not to let us be too content, Seconds does throw as a curveball towards the end—“First Day of Six” sports a driving tempo and fast, syncopated guitar playing unlike anything else on the album, but dressed in the same production as the rest of the record, it doesn’t come off as out of place. While the album might not convert any skeptics to this kind of music, the true believers could do far worse than the tightly-constructed and very well-executed Seconds. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: March 5th Record label: 12XU/Mistletone Genre: Gothic country folk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: I Found Everyone This Way
Apparently it’s John Sharkey III Week at Rosy Overdrive—one of his bands, Dark Blue, was featured on a playlist post that went up Monday, and now I’m getting around to talking about Shoot Out the Cameras, the first album he’s made under his own name. If you’re familiar with Dark Blue’s full post-punk bombast (or, God forbid, his other band Clockcleaner’s noise-punk), then you might be surprised to hear that Shoot Out the Cameras is a sparse, largely acoustic folk record. Sharkey’s voice, however, is as unmistakable and affecting as ever. Recorded after Sharkey relocated to Australia from his native Philadelphia, his rich baritone anchors an album inspired by the wildfires visible ambiently in the distance, discord in both his adopted home and birth nation, and the country music passed down to him at a young age from his mother and grandmother.
Like the bushfires in the hills outside his home in Canberra, Shoot Out the Cameras smolders. When Sharkey sings “Death is all around me, and I’m fine”, he’s making an observation over anything else—it lands like there’s no value placed on it one way or another. The headiness continues with the album’s twin seven-minute centerpieces, “Shooting Out the Speed Cameras” and “Pain Dance”. The former, with its droning feedback and Sharkey’s deliberate, chant-like vocals, is the album’s dizzying, harrowing peak, evoking the boiling dread caused by constant surveillance. The latter brings Shoot Out the Cameras down to Earth a bit with Sharkey’s return to melodic delivery and pretty acoustic guitar, but it still finds time for Crazy Horse-style soloing along the way.
I don’t want to overstate how dour Shoot Out the Cameras is. Yes, it does pull out of its difficult middle section with another song about death, but “You Don’t Have to Leave Me Flowers” comes off reassuring in its titular request. Likewise, the bombs dropping in “Tell Me Tell Me” don’t get in the way of the song’s tender balladry, and the under-the-moonlight, pre-rock-and-roll feel of “Picking Roses” isn’t hindered by the cemetery imagery and references to “crimson dunes”. In fact, the hopefulness that runs through Shoot Out the Cameras isn’t in spite of its subject matter, but rather because of how Sharkey approaches it. As dispassionate as he is when he actually sings “Death is all around me, and I’m fine”, it’s not hard to read the sentiment as both defiant and calming throughout the record.
The latter reading is how the album drifts off, with the closing “Show Me the Way Through the Valley”, and it’s a testament to Shoot Out the Cameras that when Mary Lattimore’s harp shows up in the song, the instrument feels right at home. As strong as Sharkey’s voice is on most of the album, here he opts for a near-whisper as he ties together images and thoughts from across the record—the land in ruins, life growing cold, fleeting, shallow human emotions in response to all of it. Like the sepia tones of “Picking Roses”, it’s no accident that Sharkey ends the journey in the metaphorical valley that so many gospel-tinged folk and country songs before it have evoked. This is the key for placing Shoot Out the Cameras in the context of Sharkey’s body of work. It’s a traditional, universal, elemental album that strikes new ground for Sharkey by unearthing the old. (Bandcamp link)
I’m in between new music posts at the moment now, so I thought I’d use this downtiming to dip back into my playlist archive and talk about some music I otherwise wouldn’t get to today. This time, I’ve chosen one from roughly two years ago: March 2019. I even looked up some fun facts for the occasion: The Lori Loughlin scandal broke that month, Beto O’Rourke announced he was running for president, Billie Eilish released her first album, and Dick Dale, Nipsey Hussle, and Scott Walker all passed away. I don’t think there was a global pandemic that month but my memory’s pretty foggy on that.
The majority of songs from this playlist comes from one of two camps: new stuff from the first couple months of 2019 (there’s nothing from 2018 here at all, I’d already left that year in the dust) and albums that were new to me from 1994, which I’d chosen to be my “anniversary year” (25th) for the first part of 2019. I think I must’ve made it at the beginning of the month, because most of the new music is from February. State Champion, Dark Blue, Spielbergs, Killdozer, Xiu Xiu, Swervedriver, Flesh Lights, and Lambchop are this playlist’s double dippers.
Next time I do one of these, I will go further back. We’re talking 2015, 2016. I got cold feet this time because…well, all will be explained in the future. Before that, though, I want to cover some new, fresh music, so look for some album reviews before the end of this month.
“Sunbathing I”, State Champion From Fantasy Error (2015, Sophomore Lounge)
I have been known to outsource the incredibly important task of starting and ending a playlist to others before—here I have bookended the list with both of State Champion’s “Sunbathing” songs from the start and finish of 2015’s Fantasy Error. Picking a favorite State Champion album would be like choosing a favorite child (actually even harder than that one, which is my cat) but this song and its cousin go a long way towards helping Fantasy Error’s case. The final minute (“Wondering where you tanlines led tonight/And are you gonna color them in this time?”) is where the goosebumps are.
“Waterford Crystals”, Dark Blue From Victory Is Rated (2019, 12XU)
Oh, I’m happy to get to talk about Dark Blue a bit here, who released one of my favorite albums of 2019 with Victory Is Rated. I’m not entirely sure how to describe their sound—maybe “Britpop-informed Philadelphia post-punk” would put us somewhere in the ballpark, although I certainly am not happy with it. How about this: “Waterford Crystals” sounds like what one might expect a song called “Waterford Crystals” to sound like: intricate yet expansive, towering and glacial, totally overwhelming. Lead singer John Sharkey III’s baritone gives the song even more class, but there’s still a certain darker edge to “Waterford Crystals” that I can’t quite pinpoint.
“Distant Star”, Spielbergs From This Is Not the End (2019, By the Time It Gets Dark)
Norway’s Spielbergs burst onto the scene (well, my personal scene) around this time with the really exciting This Is Not the End, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I kind of lost track of them after that. Looks like they made an EP in late 2019, I think I listened to it once or twice and it didn’t stick with me the same way. Perhaps I should go back to it. “Distant Star”, though, is just a perfectly executed indie rock-punk intersection—I still regularly catch the chorus in my head, which is strong enough to enter the lyrics into the pantheon of great songs built around “We could be…”
“Knuckles the Dog Who Helps People”, Killdozer From Uncompromising War on Art Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1994, Touch and Go)
2019 was the year I was fully baptized into the church of Killdozer. I remember hearing or reading someone (who I, unfortunately, can’t remember) say about them “They’re funny, but they’re not joking”, and this, their signature song, is probably as good an exemplar as any of this. Fitting their sludge into a classic ascending chord progression and adding triumphant guitar solos turns this into the Killdozer version of cheese, but no amount of smirk-worthy lines prevents “Knuckles the Dog Who Helps People” from being a rousing and somehow even a little bit touching sing-a-long. Should note that there is some non-subtle ableism in this song—for the purposes of parodying schlock and inspiration porn rather than punching down, to be sure, but regardless of intent I’m sure it hits different for different folks.
“Caring Is Creepy”, The Shins From Oh, Inverted World (2001, Sub Pop)
The Shins get lumped in with the 2000s indie folk rock boom (you can thank Zach Braff and that perfectly fine song I don’t really need to hear ever again for that) but they really hew closer to styles more my speed than your average cool-soundtrack-stuffer. They were a sincere guitar pop band that were in the right place with the right slant at the right time, which rarely happens. I’ve called them, and in particular Oh, Inverted World, “chill XTC” on multiple occasions (XTC, despite not being on this playlist, will still be mentioned here later on). Despite this I’d never given them a full listen until around the time this playlist was made. As I expected, it was pretty good, and “Caring Is Creepy” is the kind of lilting new wave that in a more just world would’ve been their breakout. I mean, they still did alright for themselves.
“Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy”, Xiu Xiu From Girl with Basket of Fruit (2019, Polyvinyl)
To people who don’t like Xiu Xiu—I get it. Hell, I’m not even sure if I’m a fan, even though there are multiple songs from their then-new Girl with Basket of Fruit on here. I’d be deeply concerned if Jamie Stewart was some kind of landscape-uniting lowest-common-denominator figure. But I don’t think I need to jump onto any kind of bandwagon to like “Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy”—funny, creepy, kinetic: what more could you want? Like Dan Bejar guiding me into yacht rock territory, I’m not sure if I would’ve got on board with this kind of thing without Stewart as the vessel, and it’s still kind of a sore thumb on here, but two years later I can still hang. By the way: this is what popular music sounds like now, no?
“Dylan Thomas”, Better Oblivion Community Center From Better Oblivion Community Center (2019, Dead Oceans)
The last time around on a playlist archive post I talked about how Phoebe Bridgers usually has one song per record/project that blows me away, and, well, here we are at the one from Better Oblivion Community Center. Actually, “Dylan Thomas” is an even better song than “Me & My Dog”; while that one does its build-up perfectly, here Bridgers and Connor Oberst make something immortal for the entire 3:30. It’s whip-smart as hell, knifing me line after line and completely justifying its lofty political and cinematic shadings (not to mention the invocation of the titular poet). Nobody is clamoring for me to crown 2019’s song of the year in the midst of a blog post in March 2021 that no one will read, but I’m calling it now—it was “Dylan Thomas”.
“Karma Wants to Call a Truce”, Flesh Lights From Never See Snow (2019, ATHRecords)
The unfortunately-named Flesh Lights rip through a hooky, populist strain of garage punk that I will always consume eagerly when well-written, and 2019’s Never See Snow very much fits the bill. “Karma Wants to Call a Truce” is, of course, one of the best song titles here—serving not even as the chorus of the song, but rather as its climax. It’s a jubilant number, lyrically trying to adopt a glass-half-full approach while still planting foot firmly on the ground, all the while exercising its rights as a power trio with chiming guitar and furiously melodic bass plucking.
“Spiked Flower”, Swervedriver From Future Ruins (2019, Dangerbird)
I like Future Ruins a good deal, although I remember the fan reception being kind of negative. Sorry they didn’t just re-record “Son of Mustang Ford” twelve times, I guess. “Spiked Flower” is pretty far removed from the muscular shoegaze of Raise or Mezcal Head, to be sure—it’s pure fuzz pop. Adam Franklin’s vocals, still not quite “clear”, shine through on the insistent “Why don’t you talk to me?” chorus, right before digging into that main hooky guitar riff and letting it do the rest of the work.
“You Need a Visa”, Really From From Verse (2017, Topshelf)
Indie-emo-jazz-math-punk-junk band Really From are, as of my writing this, gearing up to release their third album, and I’m excited to give it a listen when it comes out. In March 2019, however, I was still stuck on their sophomore album, Verse (initially released under the name People Like You, causing me some confusion for a couple months). I listened to it when it came out, I remember, but I think it took me coming back to it a year and change later for me to decide I was into it. “You Need a Visa” is such a nice, stately opener, with (for the most part) clean, confidently simple vocals gliding over prominent trumpet (yes!) and noodly, mathy guitar (yes yes!).
“Fade My Mind”, TK Echo From TK Echo EP (2019, Dischord)
One of my favorite microtrends is “DC era Dischord/post-hardcore bands that clearly have listened to a lot of XTC”. It’s mostly just the Dismemberment Plan and Q and Not U, and it’s the latter one that’s the string connecting us to TK Echo in 2019. Chris Richards, before he broke bad and became a music critic, played guitar and sang for the excellent Q, Not U for its seven year duration, and the new wavey subtext of his old band is just, well, text here. “Fade My Mind”’s got the hooks, and it’s got the beat.
“Oh, What a Disappointment”, Lambchop From I Hope You’re Sitting Down (1994, Merge)
How often is it that you can go all the way back to a band’s rarely-discussed first album and find that it’s just as strong as their later-career commercial and critical pinnacles? Well, one can certainly do that with Lambchop. After I Hope You’re Sitting Down, Lambchop would begin the long process of refining their sound until they reached the (excellent) chamber pop LPs of the early 2000s, but their debut still stands in all its garish, beautiful, excessive glory. There is nothing I love more than a band that makes you work hard to get to a real emotional core, and even when you get there it’s confusing, corrupted, distorted—still very potent, but nothing easy about it. It’s clear that something disturbing has happened in “Oh, What a Disappointment”, but the narrator (narrators?), other characters, motivations, timelines…like much of I Hope You’re Sitting Down, it’s just out of reach.
“Sunshine Rock”, Bob Mould From Sunshine Rock (2019, Merge)
Sunshine Rock is funnier in hindsight—it’s still strong as a celebration of Bob Mould’s career and life in general, but it now also serves as the setup to the punchline of Mould following it up with his most pissed-off sounding album to date. “Sunshine Rock”, the song, is as much of a song about being happy as its album’s reputation suggests, but it is also a song about wanting to be (and wanting to stay) happy—“Please don’t leave me in total darkness” and “There is no second chance” are its “Please don’t take my sunshine away”.
“Celebrity Lifestyle”, Swans From The Great Annihilator (1994, Young God)
The Great Annihilator is probably my favorite Swans album by default. It’s been awhile since I’ve listened to it fully, but I remember it marrying what I liked about their neofolk work with the edge of their industrial era without being too A) snoozy or B) grating. I am not exactly a Gira lifer (not even getting into what he has been accused of, which this blog post isn’t remotely qualified to address but I would feel weird not mentioning). Considering I’m going through playlists made years ago for my own personal purposes, we’ll probably run into more awkwardness in the future, but this is the only Swans song, I think. As for the song itself—”Celebrity Lifestyle”, with its relatively conventional structure and Hollywood-invoking setting, provides a more interesting background for your typical seething Gira-isms than normal. It’s practically their “Beverly Hills”, no?
“Touch Me Fall”, Indigo Girls From Swamp Ophelia (1994, Sony)
The Indigo Girls rock. I am being completely serious; they are going to get a major critical reevaluation at some point (this is GameStop stock—get in now). And Swamp Ophelia is, track for track, their crowning achievement. If you don’t believe me, just jump into “Touch Me Fall”—a six-minute, multi-section orchestral-folk-rock-prog-opera hybrid beast that manages to sound like a power ballad, a symphony, and classic Indigo Girls all in the same song. This isn’t even mentioning the drum-centric breakdown towards a minute left of the number that both makes you go “wait, who am I listening to?” and then resolves effortlessly into the central hook. If, say, Fiona Apple or Annie Vincent made this it’d be on every year-end list you could aggregate.
“Come for Me”, Sunflower Bean From King of the Dudes EP (2019, Mom+Pop)
A decade earlier and a continent away Sunflower Bean might’ve gotten caught in the landfill indie gold rush, but I think that they are better off rising now, where they can proudly wave their classic hard rock & glam influences without any kind of baggage. “Come for Me” introduces some Nile Rodgers-y disco guitar into the mix, which may have been the final ingredient in making the ultimate amber-ready Sunflower Bean Song. Its sexually-charged bar-fight lyrics are the polar opposite of the closest modern musical comparison I can conjure for them, the Thin Lizzy collectivism of Sheer Mag, but that’s certainly not an issue. Sometimes you jump up on the table with your bullhorn and manifesto in hand, but sometimes you just want to see who’s got the guts to knock you down.
“Everybody Disappear”, Eerie Family From Eerie Family (2019, Alien Snatch)
The punk-to-darkwave pipeline lives on! At least I think that’s what’s going on here—I’m not too familiar with the duo behind Eerie Family or their predecessor band The Hex Dispensers. They’re from Taylor, Texas—how cool is that? I’d never heard of a band being from there before, although upon further research apparently Greg Ginn (and therefore SST) lives there now. “Everybody Disappear” is, despite its dour clothes, an excellent pop song, all spare synths, dark handclaps, and marimbas (perhaps played on a skeleton’s ribcage?) and Alex Cuervo deadpanning his “oh-ohs” while Alyse Mervosh intones the titular line over and over in the background.
“Clockout”, Devo From Duty Now for the Future (1979, Warner Bros.)
The second straight Rosy Overdrive playlist to feature a song from Devo’s second album, but in this case it’s an original rather than a David Nance cover. “Clockout” is Devo at their wildest, with that recurring drumroll accompanied by Gerard Casale really hamming it up singing the song’s title being a moment of abandon that the band didn’t always allow themselves. Still, it’s Devo we’re talking about here—the verses are all careening stops-and-starts, vaguely uncomfortable suit-and-tie lyrics, and of course the immortal line “I’m afraid the future’s gonna be maintenance-free”.
“Juicy”, The Notorious B.I.G. From Ready to Die (1994, Bad Boy)
It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine. I should put a nineties hip-hop song in the middle of all of these playlists, but unfortunately this one and the Tribe song in the last playlist are more of the exception than the rule. Anyway, I heard Ready to Die in full around March 2019, which probably would’ve constituted my first non-passive experience listening to Biggie. I can’t really wade into the debate of where that album ranks among its peers, but I can say that “Juicy” is as good as anything I’ve heard from the genre. The whole thing sounds great, the hook by Total is an all-time, and you can hear the myth being made in real time.
“Over the Falls”, Exasperation From Paradise (2019, Postlude Paradox)
The San Diego post-punk-garage-rockers Exasperation released Paradise in 2019, which was as solid as it was overlooked. The whole thing is worth a listen, but “Over the Falls” here is the pop-friendly album highlight to my ears. The majority of the song is pretty subtle in its charms—the steady rhythm section, the swirling guitar—but the song’s stomping chorus is anything but. “’Cause I’ve got no control / Over the falls in a wooden barrel” is shout-along-worthy, landing somewhere in the vicinity of the effortless cool of Dinosaur Jr.’s hooks and the barking of The Fall.
“Gates of Heaven”, Killdozer From Twelve Point Buck (1989, Touch and Go)
Another Killdozer number, this one taking place (where else?) at the Pearly Gates. The poor recently-deceased man that “Gates of Heaven” follows, Jesús, is a typical Killdozer character—lonely, drunk—who couldn’t even muster up a fight against his “William Holden” death. In “Gates of Heaven”, Michael Gerald’s growl is accompanied by what could only be described as Killdozer’s version of “bouncy”—this particular blast of guitar is positively jaunty. Butch Vig’s production on Twelve Point Buck is supposedly what led him to produce Nirvana’s Nevermind—I can’t find a source that confirms this directly, but it is generally agreed to be the album that put him on the map as a producer, so I’m just going to say that Killdozer deserve royalties from “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, or at least “In Bloom”.
“Propane”, The Wrens From Silver (1994, Grass)
Silver, The Wrens’ first album, is…completely fine. It’s a too-long, disjointed, Pixies-worshipping unstable journey that nevertheless shows plenty of traces of the band that would go on to make a minor (Secaucus) and a major (The Meadowlands) masterpiece over the next decade. The brief, 80-second opening track “Propane” doesn’t really give away what the listener is in for over the following 68 minutes of that album, though. Effectively a prelude (I guess an interlude in this context), “Propane” lays out its best absurd Alternative Nation imagery over minimal guitar strumming—nine bibles to rest your head on, throwing down marbles in a field of stray boys, you know, the usual.
“The Lonely Crowd Fades in the Air”, Swervedriver From Future Ruins (2019, Dangerbird)
As solid a pop song “Spiked Flower” is, “The Lonely Crowd Fades in the Air” might be the better all-around cut from Future Ruins on the playlist. It has some fairly simple but still effective guitar heroics going on, and it kicks up some dust with its propulsion like some of the classic Swervedriver numbers. It sounds exactly like a song called “The Lonely Crowd Fades in the Air” should sound like: a rusty spaceship sadly hovering over the ruins to come, a song aware of the danger of the future and what we’ll lose along the way.
“Mother”, Tallies From Tallies (2019, Kanine/Hand Drawn Dracula)
Sparkly, shiny, jangly dream pop that recalls a peppier Sundays and the more guitar-heavy end of classic 4AD. The Toronto band dropped their self-titled debut album, which contains “Mother”, a little over two years ago and haven’t released anything since—hopefully they’re still around and working on LP2. At least we have “Mother” in the meantime. Sarah Cogan’s lead vocal is a lot clearer than, say, your typical Elizabeth Fraser-led tune, but the song similarly puts a good deal of emphasis on inflection, particularly in the “It’s not safe! It’s not safe!” bit at the end. The song’s lyrics are about Cogan’s growing appreciation for her relationship with (as the title implies) her mother, which is a nice change of subject and probably unique on this playlist.
“Sundrops”, Kristin Hersh From Hips and Makers (1994, 4AD/Sire)
Rosy Overdrive has given Throwing Muses love in the past but this is the first Hersh solo song to appear on one of these—and what a song it is. Hersh has incorporated the acoustic atmospheres of Hips and Makers so seamlessly into her repertoire that it’s easy to miss how the album was probably a bit of a shock to fans at the time. It’s a great album, a career highlight—Hersh excelled at musical evocation more than most of her peers with Throwing Muses, and nothing is lost in translation here. “Sundrops” rocks as much as an acoustic-guitar-and-cello number can possibly rock, with Hersh’s frantic strumming and Jane Scarpantoni’s one-person orchestra accompaniment more than compensating for lack of plug-ins.
“Bad Friend”, Spielbergs From This Is Not the End (2019, By the Time It Gets Dark)
The second Spielbergs song on here isn’t the unabashed anthem that “Distant Star” is, at least not by comparison. It’s certainly as catchy, and that chorus is just as big and loud, but the fuck-off subject matter and the way Spielbergs bury the verses give it the album-track feel. It’s less evocative of taking on the world head-on and more about just taking back one small slice of it for yourself. “Bad Friend” shows that the band doesn’t take on any emotion half-assed, though. After the “I don’t wanna be part of your future” bridge builds up and then explodes, you come away knowing the Spielbergs don’t just love fireworks—this band is fireworks.
“Couldn’t I Just Tell You”, Todd Rundgren From Something/Anything? (1972, Bearsville)
“Couldn’t I Just Tell You” is the Todd Rundgren song that always makes me say “why don’t all Todd Rundgren songs sound like this?” This would probably be on my classic power pop anthem shortlist if I were the kind of nerd to make that kind of list—Rundgren ripping through the verses only to pull back just enough to let the airy chorus stand tall is more than enough to wreck anybody who’s ever bought a used Raspberries LP, to say nothing of that blissful studio fuckery at the end of the bridge (around 2:30). I probably heard Game Theory’s cover of this song before the original—unsurprisingly, it’s also great, but I have to give Rundgren the advantage here despite my biases.
“Soaky in the Pooper”, Lambchop From I Hope You’re Sitting Down (1994, Merge)
I can think of no better “Lambchop in a nutshell” moment than crafting a beautiful, affecting, masterpiece of a song and then titling it “Soaky in the Pooper”. Part of me is still annoyed at how it makes it harder for me to get people into Lambchop, but, you know, you do gotta hand it to ‘em. And if the song’s title is what prevents “Soaky in the Pooper” from ever being reduced to Spotify mood playlist fodder or a schlocky adult contemporary cover, then it’s more than served its purpose. The song isn’t background music—the trumpets and harp soundtrack some of Kurt Warner’s most brilliant and upsetting lyrics, in which someone dies from (presumably) a drug overdose in a vividly-described bathroom. Fair warning about this one.
“Living Waters”, Silver Jews From Starlite Walker (1994, Drag City)
“Living Waters” got the nod here over a couple of technically-better songs from Starlite Walker (I’m thinking of “New Orleans” and especially “Trains Across the Sea”) because of how giddy and infectious it is. Maybe on its own it might cause a skeptic to wonder “what’s the big deal?”, but to me it’s part and parcel of what drew me and kept me with the Silver Jews. It’s going from “When they turn on the chair, something added to the air forever” to the car horn sound effect in “Honk If You’re Lonely” in the same album. Being able to pull off both is indicative of David Berman’s unique appeal, the one that made me want to (lightly) roast how many music writers were excitedly profiling Berman when he came back while at the same time eagerly reading every one of those profiles. Oh, right, “Living Waters”. I know Berman felt smothered under the shadow of Stephen Malkmus and Pavement around this time, and with good reason since he was better than Pavement, but Malkmus could really bring out the best of Berman’s songwriting, as he does here prominently.
“Beeker St.”, Flesh Lights From Never See Snow (2019, ATHRecords)
The hits keep coming for Flesh Lights with “Beeker St.”, which is even more of a classic power trio anthem than “Karma Wants to Call a Truce” was. “Beeker St.” never lets up on the gas for its entire two minutes and thirty seconds, pulling no punches with its cascading downhill guitar and bass flourishes that didn’t have to be nearly as noticeably satisfying as they are for the song to work. Max Vandever’s vocals are cleanly melodic but a little weary, conjuring up fellow Austinite Rhett Miller fronting a sped-up, punked-up version of his normal band.
“Water Wings”, Superchunk From Foolish (1994, Merge)
I was a Superchunk fan for quite some time before I was fully on board with Foolish. I’d heard it a few times, but in my mind I’ve always kind of thought of them as a singles band, and there’s no “Hyper Enough” or “Precision Auto” on Foolish. Needless to say I was wrong—I swung hard for that album in 2019 between revisiting it for its 25th anniversary and getting really into the Acoustic Foolish album that would come out a few months later. “Water Wings” is not the best song from the album, but it is one that went from “couldn’t pick it out of a lineup” to “prime example of Superchunk at their mid-90s peak” over time.
“I Won’t Try That Hard”, Diva Sweetly From In the Living Room (2019, Seal Mountain)
Oh, very nice. The Diva Sweetly album is really fun; I’m glad I get to highlight it here briefly. “I Won’t Try That Hard” is a frantic two-minute carousel of a pop-punk song with some tactically-deployed hooky synths. In the Living Room has plenty of sugar-rush moments like this, with the gang vocals and Rentals-esque keys, but they also spread out a little with some more mid-tempo, turn-of-the-century emo tunes. Like a lot of bands on this playlist, it would be nice to hear from them again soon. Until that moment, though, I’m gonna enjoy raging against my own perceived failures and personal dead ends, like “I Won’t Try That Hard” does.
“Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House”, Yo La Tengo From And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (2000,Matador)
Here for no reason in particular, other than I was still in the process of inching closer and closer to becoming a Yo La Tengo fan after years of them being the big 90s indie rock band that I “didn’t get” (I’m working through this with Stereolab now). “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House” is a great exemplar of the Big Quiet Late Night Drive Yo La Tengo Album, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. A shuffling drumbeat, simple organ chords, and Georgia Hubley’s dreamy vocals help the song plod confidently along. Lyrically, “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House” (apparently named after a Simpsons gag) does nothing to lessen Yo La Tengo’s reputation as “indie rock for record collectors, by record collectors”, with its bizarre narrative featuring Frankie Valli and the titular Orlando containing several references and allusions to the bandleaders’ respective careers.
“Let Me Tell You a New Story”, Dark Blue From Victory Is Rated (2019, 12XU)
The second Dark Blue song on this playlist is in the same world as the first one, although “Let Me Tell You a New Story” introduces a shimmery, hooky guitar arpeggio and John Sharkey III stretches out his vocal range a little more to great effect. The triumphant chorus, featuring a confident “Days go by” and “Veins run dry” rhyme, is positively anthemic, featuring trumpet played by none other than fellow Philadelphian Kurt Vile. The simple yet effective lyrics of “Let Me Tell You a New Story” remind me of the songwriting from Sharkey III’s just-released solo album, which I think I will have more to say about on Rosy Overdrive soon.
“Normal Love”, Xiu Xiu From Girl with a Basket of Fruit (2019, Polyvinyl)
Bad news for people who don’t like Xiu Xiu: we’ve got another Xiu Xiu song here. Somehow I didn’t even know that Oxbow’s Eugene Robinson was the other vocalist on “Normal Love” until I looked it up just now, but as soon as I read his name I immediately thought “Duh! Of course! Who else could that be!” Anyway, this song is the classic Xiu Xiu ballad, minimalist piano and bass setting the stage for all sorts of uncomfortable Jamie Stewart-isms (and Robinson-isms this time!) to crawl creepily over it.
“Sunbathing II”, State Champion From Fantasy Error (2015, Sophomore Lounge)
Maybe one of these days I’ll talk about a State Champion song from their most recent album, although by that point they’ll probably (hopefully?) have something new out. Anyway, today is not that day, but it is the day for “Sunbathing II”, which is a slower, lazier (not in execution but in what it evokes) sequel to the first “Sunbathing” that kicked this whole thing off. None of the emotional impact of the other “Sunbathing” is lost here, not even after the Sparklehorse-esque static interruption about a minute-and-a-half into it. Lot of gems here, but “My backyard is bringing me down / And my front one is freaking me out” is the line that sticks out to me at the moment; just one of many, and nobody does it better than State Champion.
I present to you: the third brand new monthly Rosy Overdrive playlist, and the site’s fourth playlist overall. 2021 is in full swing in terms of new music, which is where the majority of these songs come from. My foray into 1991 (which started last month) continues—it’s been on the backburner a bit, but a few songs from then surface here as well.
Lydia Loveless, The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, Yasmin Williams, and Mister Goblin earn the incredibly prestigious honor of having two songs on the playlist this time around. There are three Hold Steady songs on here, because I’m not getting paid for this and I can do what I want.
Weather permitting, I will have an archival playlist that I made roughly two years ago written up a week or so after this post’s publication, and then some album/EP write-ups later this month. I’ve also got a few songs already marked down for the March 2021 playlist—that will be fun.
“Specificity (Or What Have You)”, Terry Gross From Soft Opening (2021, Thrill Jockey)
For some reason naming themselves after the NPR host, the band Terry Gross is an offshoot from the long-running krautrock/post-rock power trio Trans Am. TA’s guitarist Phil Manley leads this group—he and two fellow recording engineers, Donny Newenhouse and Phil Becker, created Soft Opening in the Bay Area recording studio they co-own. The amusingly-titled “Specificity (Or What Have You)” is the only one of the album’s three (!!) songs under twelve minutes, which unsurprisingly makes it the most easily digestible of the record’s vastly expansive yet accessible psychedelic space rock. The propulsive rhythm section checks the bursts of guitar freakouts, melodic vocals and an actually catchy chorus balance out the long instrumental breaks.
“The Shining But Tropical”, Wild Pink From A Billion Little Lights (2021, Royal Mountain)
This song’s been out for awhile now, but I had to hear it in the context of February’s A Billion Little Lights to fully appreciate it. Wild Pink continues delving into shiny, polished heartland rock with their new album—a development that initially put me off of 2018’s Yolk in the Fur after being a big fan of their self-titled debut. While I’m still conflicted about that album, this new record quickly grabbed my attention after putting it on more or less as an afterthought. Either frontman John Ross and crew have grown more comfortable in these shoes, or I’ve grown more open to Indie Rock Superheroes Wild Pink with time—whatever is the case, “The Shining But Tropical” is an excellent gliding pop rock anthem that justifies Ross’ citation of Sagan’s Cosmos as inspiration. I had no idea that Julia Steiner from Ratboys sings the backing vocals on this song until researching for this, but she’s the best part of the whole damn thing—that second verse is positively goosebump-inducing, and every indie singer-songwriter with pop ambitions should be taking notes.
“The First One”, Kittyhawk From Mikey’s Favorite Songs (2021, Count Your Lucky Stars)
I wrote about Mikey’s Favorite Songs, the compilation of Kittyhawk’s non-LP material, last month. I recommend you check out the whole thing, but I’ve included “The First One” here, which in my review I referred to as “straightforwardly sweet”, “infectious”, and “correctly-titled”. There are some pleasing back-and-forth vocals going on here. I can very vividly picture the new apartment in the song, boxes half-unpacked, wires and cables strewn about just so we can set up the record player and listen to something while we go through the rest of the stuff, staying up late because no routines exist yet, everything lying ahead of us
“Lover’s Spat”, Lydia Loveless From Boy Crazy and Single(s) (2017, Bloodshot)
I have a few “break glass in case of emergency” albums that I’ve never heard but know I’ll enjoy when I do. There’s still a Yo La Tengo album I haven’t listened to, a Low album, that album that Ted Leo and Aimee Mann did together….Anyway, I finally listened to the Lydia Loveless comp after being a fan of her proper albums for awhile now. And now here I am in 2021, enjoying “Lover’s Spat”, AKA the Jeffrey Dahmer song. Originally from 2013’s Boy Crazy EP, I’m not entirely sure if Loveless intended the song to be literally from the perspective of the serial killer, a metaphor for a relationship fight, or if it’s completely autobiographical and there’s just an alarming level of coincidences between Dahmer and Loveless. My fact checker has not gotten back to me yet RE: whether or not she was pursuing a business degree at OSU as of press time.
“Can’t You See?”, The Boys with the PerpetualNervousness From Songs from Another Life (2021, Bobo Integral)
In my review of Songs from Another Life, I referred to “Can’t You See?” as an “under-two-minute plea” with “urgent” undertones. I also complimented how it immediately grabs the listener with its Teenage Fanclub-revering jangle-pop chorus—the song is effectively one 90-second-long hook.
“Lanyards”, The Hold Steady From Open Door Policy (2021, Positive Jams)
Coming after two songs that take some time to fully appreciate, “Lanyards” was the first “oh shit, the Hold Steady are back” moment in Open Door Policy for me. It’s not the easy way to get there, either. It’s not a party of a song, but rather a mid-tempo number ornamented with Franz Nicolay’s piano playing that explodes in the chorus. Craig Finn’s wistful talk-singing feels like a natural progression from his solo work, and he plays his lyrical hand very well here, letting the atmosphere and the words speak for themselves here. The words are more than enough, mind you—“Lanyards” is a bleary world of hospital bracelets, doctors, failed acting careers, and the western edge of the (continental) United States.
“Sunshowers”, Yasmin Williams From Urban Driftwood (2021, Spinster)
In my review of Urban Driftwood, I noted my appreciation for how “the quiet picking of ‘Sunshowers’ gives way, about a minute in, to a giddily melodic riff and adds on from there”. The way Williams is able to clearly delineate the introduction of “Sunshowers” from the central part of the song and then clearly call back to both of them over the track’s four minutes is edge-of-the-seat-worthy, and doing it entirely with one instrument is a nice change of pace for the playlist if I do say so myself.
“Seeing Shapes”, Teen Creeps From Forever (2021, [PIAS]/Sentimental)
Belgian’s Teen Creeps cite Superchunk and Dinosaur Jr. as influences, and “Seeing Shapes” delivers as a paean to scrappy, 90’s underdog indie rock—aware of punk rock but not punk, emotional but not emo, a guitar jam first and foremost but burying pop sensibilities under the squall. While musically the J. Mascis guitar hero effects are easy to pinpoint, lyrically “Seeing Shapes” remind of another member of Dino Jr.—Lou Barlow and his Sebadoh. “Seeing Shapes” is an ugly, self-effacing, vaguely uncomfortable number: “Look into my eyes before you leave me for someone better / I’m a mess inside but at least it’s been that way forever” is absolutely brutal. I wouldn’t want to be miles near anyone involved in whatever relationship is being described here, but it makes for good theater.
“100,000 Fireflies”, The Magnetic Fields From Distant Plastic Trees (1991, PoPuP)
Here we have the first classic Magnetic Fields song. Distant Plastic Trees is far from Stephin Merritt’s best work, but this song’s reputation is well-earned. “I have a mandolin / I play it all night long / It makes me want to kill myself” is one of the greatest opening lines of all time, but “You won’t be happy with me / But give me one more chance / You won’t be happy anyway” is the sound of 69 Love Songs (and, really, Merritt’s whole career) germinating. I’m not sure how Susan Anway’s vocals are viewed by Fields-heads, and I don’t love either of the albums she fronts enough to have a strong position on whether she helps or hurts the songs, but it is hard for me to imagine any voice suiting the twinkling plastic instrumentation of “100,000 Fireflies” as well as hers do. Not even Mac McCaughan. The quiet “Josephine” from the same album is just as good as this song, but didn’t fit quite as well on the playlist, if you’re looking for a deep cut.
“On and On”, The Fragiles From On and On (2021, Living Lost)
In my review of On and On, I referred to the title track as a “five-minute slow burn”. While there are perhaps more straightforward pop songs on that album (see “Kaleidoscope” or “Armistice Day”), “On and On” is the song that I continually find myself most transfixed by. The song is anchored by a simple, cycling guitar riff that puts the song in psych-pop territory, while the lo-fi production and busy drum work give it a sharper edge as well. It’s the perfect soundtrack to watch satellites float across the sky and consider space and time, as the song’s lyrics suggest.
“Excursions”, A Tribe Called Quest From The Low End Theory (1991, Zomba)
The Low End Theory is good because of how effortlessly it folds jazz into hip-hop, so what better song to pull from it than “Excursions”—the song that explains how hip-hop is pulling from the same cloth as jazz? All over an upright bass, too, which unfortunately didn’t catch on in hip-hop to the degree I would’ve preferred it to. “Excursions” is also a pretty good exemplar of how Q-Tip AKA The Abstract earned his reputation as the philosophical one of the recognizable 90’s MCs—not that others couldn’t have pulled off something as simultaneously verbose and down-to-earth as “Excursions”, but this is how Tip and Quest thought they should start off their biggest album.
“Some Nerve”, Sweet Soul From So Far No Further (2021, New Morality Zine/Extinction Burst)
“Some Nerve” is a short and sweet slice of melodic punk rock. Nearly the whole two-minute thing is the chorus, all power chords and “whoa-ohs”, with the main hook appearing both in vocal and lead guitar form. Sweet Soul even make time for some brief melodic bass playing. I’d easily recommend the rest of So Far No Further to you if this sounds up your alley—it’s ten songs of this band’s heavier brand of pop punk in 23 minutes. Frontman Taylor Soul, rather than hamming it up and singing in the nasally whine characteristic of this kind of music, instead brings forward an understated, nearly emotionless vocal, giving the whole thing a vaguely sinister undercurrent (just an undercurrent, mind you—it’s still fun music).
“Mr. Chill”, Dan Wriggins From Mr. Chill (2021, Orindal)
I saw Dan Wriggins’ band, Friendship, play this song live in 2019 before all the Unpleasantness went down. I remember liking it, and being disappointed it didn’t show up on their album that came out later that year, Dreamin’. It’s now finally seen the light of day, as the title track for Wriggins’ debut solo EP that comes out mid-March. Friendship’s Michael Cormier adds some quiet barroom piano and percussion to “Mr. Chill”, which Wriggins says he wrote while working for a tree care company. The laid-back music of the song accompanies lyrics that stare down the abyss of routine threatening to dull everything valuable and meaningful in this world. It has a great punchline, too.
“Unpleasant Breakfast”, The Hold Steady From Open Door Policy (2021, Positive Jams)
“Unpleasant Breakfast” is, for a Hold Steady song, weird as hell. Craig Finn is still doing his Craig Finn thing, and the Springsteen horns are, while not exactly a band staple, nothing new either—but this is about where the similarities end. The song starts building around, of all things, a shuffling drum machine beat, and a good deal of “Unpleasant Breakfast” is accompanied by an absurd “whoooo”ing siren sound (which, as someone moderately tapped into the Hold Steady fan community, I can tell you was easily the most controversial part of Open Door Policy). About four minutes into the five-minute number they break out into the “normal” bombastic, Franz Nicolay piano-led Hold Steady, as if to say “yes, we could’ve done the song that way if we wanted to, but where’s the fun in that?” Appropriate for a song rejecting “the romance in these ghosts”, which I assume has to do with nostalgia.
“The Perfect Idiot”, Fievel Is Glauque From God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess (2021, La Loi)
Belgian kitchen-sink pop band Fievel Is Glauque cover a lot of ground on God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess—frantic orchestral pop, chill bedroom lounge, straight-up jazz numbers. Album opener “The Perfect Idiot” is a short burst of bossa nova-informed indie pop, with metronome percussion accompanying Ma Clément’s sweet vocal. Despite its brevity and surface simplicity, Fievel Is Glauque cram quite a bit of instrumental injections into “The Perfect Idiot”, presumably both from co-bandleader Zach Phillips and the laundry list of collaborators listed on the album’s Bandcamp page.
“I Gotta Getaway”, Wake Up From Tigers Can’t Be Choosers (2021, Maggot Chic)
Tigers Can’t Be Choosers came out in February, but apparently it’s several years older than that—recorded by Wake Up in 2012-2013 but ultimately shelved before finally seeing the light of day in the midst of quarantine. None of this really makes much difference to me, who’d never heard of this band at all until a couple of weeks ago, so it just comes off like an album of new 90’s indie rock-influenced music. Obviously, there are quite a few bands out there inviting Pavement comparisons in the year of our Lord 2021, but “I Gotta Getaway” hooked me immediately. With “Church on White”-style Malkmus vocals and a There’s Nothing Wrong with Love guileless pop sensibility, “I Gotta Getaway” is an extremely likeable single even before that starry-eyed chorus kicks in.
“At Least”, Mister Goblin From Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is theDevil (2021, Exploding in Sound)
I didn’t really touch on “At Least” in my Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil review, even though it’s maybe my favorite song from that album. Like an increasing number of Mister Goblin songs, it starts off as a fairly subtle downbeat number before exploding in sound in the latter half of the track. Although the hospital climax of the song is thrilling (it’s a release, sure, but I’m not sure if “cathartic” is the right word) it’s how it gets there that really makes “At Least”. While I don’t understand exactly how every line of the lyric fits in with each other, I don’t really need to in order to get into the headspace of the song’s narrator. It’s a song about regret and repentance, full of brutal self-laceration (“I know that I can’t cut it, but I can’t quit”… “Just don’t work too hard / Not on my account”). “At Least” is a plea, not even for forgiveness, just for an acknowledgement that the narrator is trying to atone—and for me it is unclear if anything is resolved by the end of the song’s near-five-minute runtime.
“Fortune”, Dog Faced Hermans From Mental Blocks for All Ages (1991, Konkurrel)
I’ve been a fan of Dutch agit-punks The Ex for awhile now, but I’m only now getting around to one of the bands most frequently associated with them. Dog Faced Hermans and The Ex are linked together most prominently by guitarist Andy Moor, a founding member of the former and thirty-year member of the latter, but the musical similarities are present as well. “Fortune” is classic aural guerilla, an anything-but-easy listen led by a pummeling rhythm section and insistent horn section. The similarities stop with vocalist Marion Coutts, whose dramatic, operatic performance is a far cry from G.W. Sok’s carnival barking, but is no less effective. An artist who just happened to dabble in music in addition to several other fields, Coutts invites comparisons to Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings, a band who seems just now to be getting its moment in the sun. While Coutts’ rather accomplished musical background fails to make this a 1:1 comparison, Dog Faced Hermans conjure up a similar aura of a happy accident of a band that we’re lucky to witness come together.
“Skyline Top Removal”, Styrofoam Winos From Styrofoam Winos (2021, Sophomore Lounge)
In my Styrofoam Winos review, I said that “Skyline Top Removal” “marries the record’s brightest and most pleasing music with its most striking images and biting lyrics (‘It was built on the backs of the underpaid….but isn’t it minimal? Isn’t it great?’, chiefly, not to mention the song title itself) to make a modern southern-urban classic.” Lou Turner, the Wino at the helm for this song, deftly shifts from singing the song’s two distinct hooks to delivering a more conversational talk-singing style in the verses to really sell the potent energy of “Skyline Top Removal”.
“Rose Tinted Glass”, The Boys with the PerpetualNervousness From Songs from Another Life (2021, Bobo Integral)
Continuing the Teenage Fanclub-indebted jangle pop bliss of “Can’t You See?” earlier in this playlist, “Rose Tinted Glass” is a similarly brief track, which as the title suggests is a bittersweet, melancholy reminiscence of a past long gone—a feeling that this style of music is particularly good at capturing. Although The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness ultimately resolve to look forward by the end of “Rose Tinted Glass”, the exact details of the song are less important than the images it conjures. Sitting on the floor tuning a guitar, an unspecified “you”, the titular glass—in the hands of TBWTPN’s chiming guitars, it’s all a pure evocation.
“Witness to Your Secrets”, The Cakekitchen From Time Flowing Backwards (1991, Homestead)
The Cakekitchen was New Zealander Graeme Jeffries’ third notable band after Nocturnal Projections and This Kind of Punishment, and the first that didn’t also feature his brother Peter, who pursued a solo career in the 1990s before more or less retiring from music. The Cakekitchen released two albums in 1991—the album that this song is from, which is a compilation of sorts, and a more proper LP called World of Sand. Time Flowing Backwards is effectively a U.S. reissue of their debut EP, where “Witness to Your Secrets” was originally released, plus some bonus tracks. This song is a departure from the dark, noisy post-punk that characterized Jeffries’ 80s work and suggested a brighter future that was more in line with the kind of music for which Flying Nun Records was becoming renowned. Although the deeper cuts from Time Flowing Backwards revealed trace elements of Jeffries’ past work, with “Witness to Your Secrets” he and the rest of the band put together a gorgeous, reasonably-polished guitar pop ballad that could’ve easily been an indie rock standard.
“Houses into Homes”, Katie Ellen From Cowgirl Blues (2017, Lauren)
I struggled with isolating an individual song from Anika Pyle’s recent solo album, Wild River, for this playlist, but my enjoyment of that record caused me to look back on her previous bands a bit and led me to this song from Katie Ellen’s Cowgirl Blues. I didn’t remember this song upon revisiting, which is odd because A) I recall listening to Cowgirl Blues a lot when it came out and B) it rules. So consider “Houses into Homes” a dual-purpose song here—both as a reminder that Wild River is still good and you should listen to it, but also as a great song in its own right. It’s a pop punk ripper of a song that deploys its ace “Meet me in the courtyard, darling” hook just the right amount of times in its two minutes, and covers the impressive breadth of a relationship and its aftermath in relatively few words.
“Spy Vs. Spy”, Smart Went Crazy From Now We’re Even (1996, Dischord)
Now We’re Even, which turned 25 last month, doesn’t reach the heights of the following year’s Con Art, to say nothing of Chad Clark’s 21st century work with Beauty Pill. Divorced from that lineage and taken as a mid-90s Dischord Records muscular post-punk album, however, I’d consider it above average, and there are glimmers—which leads us to “Spy Vs. Spy”. On the surface it’s a fairly straightforward mid-tempo moody-rocker, but with plenty of subtle moments that stick out—a brief but memorable performance by Hilary Soldati’s cello, Clark’s increasingly theatrical vocal performance in the second half of the song, and an unexpected shining moment from the bass guitar towards the end—indicating that something was already fully-formed here.
“Good Luck Come Back”, Caithlin De Marrais From What Will You Do Then? (2021, Skeletal Lightning)
I think the last we’d heard from Caithlin De Marrais was in 2017, when her underrated band Rainer Maria released the underrated S/T, which found the emo trio embracing a smoldering, harder-rocking sound. What Will You Do Then?, then, is De Marrais’ chance to explore a different avenue—sparse, dreamy, often dark synthpop. Album opener “Good Luck Come Back” is certainly sparse; while De Marrais contributes memorable bass playing and synths interjections to a beat provided by fellow Rainer Maria member Kaia Fisher, the two still leave plenty of empty space for De Marrais’ heartbreaking lyrics to hang over the listener. It also doesn’t skimp on the “pop” side of synthpop, either—when De Marrais and Annie Nero hit “Do you feel alone?” it takes the song to the next level.
“The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize”, David Nance From Duty Now for the Future (2021, Self-released)
It was incredibly generous of Nebraska lo-fi negative boogie-er David Nance to cover Devo’s second album in its entirety last month. Apparently Nance is no stranger to these projects (he’s also got versions of Berlin and Beatles for Sale in his archives) it caught me by surprize as the first one to come out since I’ve been aware of his music. Duty Now for the Future makes a hell of a lot of sense of him, too—Nance often comes off as a more expansive, prairie-fied version of Devo’s Midwestern rust punk. “The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize” filters one of the more straightforward songs from the album through bluesy basement fuzz and country feedback, creating a new wave-tinged garage rock raver.
“Anything You Want”, Spoon From Girls Can Tell (2001, Merge)
I’ve been making these playlists, mostly for myself, for over five years now, and scrolling through my personal archives I was surprised to find I’d selected at least one song from every Spoon album except for this one and the divisive Hot Thoughts. While I’ve come around to Hot Thoughts somewhat, the lack of anything from Girls Can Tell is what we call an “egregious oversight”. That album, which turned 20 last month, is the one that solidified the “Spoon sound”, the uncanny valley Texas-Kinks-piano-rock that somehow turned them into the one indie rock band of the 2000s that earned the “cool” label through their music rather than their critical or cultural clout. And it’s the album that kickstarted their case for being the band of that entire decade, which would be rock solid if they’d just released Transference a couple weeks earlier. I haven’t really said anything about “Anything You Want” yet, but it’s a great Spoon song, maybe the great Spoon song—the simplest organ riff, a simple guitar riff, Britt Daniel rambling about something that doesn’t really need to be examined but can be, and just enough variation over two minutes to make the entire thing memorable.
“All I Know”, Lydia Loveless From Boy Crazy and Single(s) (2017, Bloodshot)
Another cut originally from the Boy Crazy EP—the opening track this time. While not quite dealing in subject matter as striking as “Lover’s Spat”, “All I Know” is a very well-written alt-country pop song about certain universal inconvenient feelings, and about losing the fight between yourself and them for control of where you’re eventually gonna end up. “How many times have I lied awake at night / Wishing you were here to start a fight” is a good an opening line as any in Loveless’ work, and I can particularly relate to deciding that time and distance are going to solve all one’s problems and then getting immediately frustrated that a nine-hour flight didn’t do the trick.
“Soho Square”, The Crowd Scene From South Circular (2020, Self-released)
While I didn’t really talk about “Soho Square” in my South Circular review, quite a few points of comparison I brought up for the album as a whole—Aimee Mann, Jon Brion, Brendan Benson—apply here. One thing I didn’t bring up in my review that I ought’ve is Anne Rogers’ sublime Neko Case-esque backing vocals, only briefly surfacing in the chorus of this song but making the most of their moment. Lyrically “Soho Square” feels like perhaps a more personal spin on “all the lonely people”, and I detect some Andy Partridge in the song’s more anxious moments.
“Nothing Without You”, Cloud Nothings From The Shadow I Remember (2021, Carpark)
The second song on this playlist in which a male-fronted indie rock band recruits a female singer from a Chicago-based group to help out on vocals, “Nothing Without You” is a highlight from Cloud Nothings’ return-to-a-form-that-they-never-really-left-so-they-didn’t-actually-need-a-return The Shadow I Remember. Rather than just harmonizing with Dylan Baldi, Macie Stewart from Ohmme takes the reins to the chorus hook all by herself, and it works out very well—there are a half-dozen songs from the album that would’ve slotted just fine here, but “Nothing Without You” has just that little extra juice. Bizarre Tamagotchi game not required, but it’s not like you’ve got anything better to do.
“Forty One Days”, Boozoo Chavis From Boozoo Chavis (1991, Elektra/Nonesuch)
I’ve always found zydeco music incredibly fun and revival-worthy, and as an NRBQ fan I’m familiar with who Boozoo Chavis is due to their 1989 song “Boozoo, That’s Who”, but 1991’s Boozoo Chavis is the first time I’ve really listened to Chavis’ music. The man could teach modern contract negotiators a thing or two about holding out—frustrated with not receiving money from his 1954 debut single, “Paper in My Shoe”, he recorded nearly nothing for the next three decades before friends, family, and fans lured him out of semi-retirement in the late 80s for a brief (he passed away in 2001) but surprisingly prolific recording career. The album “Forty One Days” comes from was Chavis’ major-label debut, and was produced by NRBQ’s Terry Adams. It’s a classic zydeco number if I’ve ever heard one, featuring a blues lyric that’s brightened up by the fast tempo and joyous accordion playing, as well as an amusing spoken intro by Chavis himself.
“Adrift”, Yasmin Williams feat. Taryn Wood From Urban Driftwood (2021, Spinster)
In my Urban Driftwood review, I wrote that “’Adrift’, featuring cello accompaniment from Taryn Wood, builds into a swirling number that intertwines both instruments, but its slower tempo also allows Wood’s and Williams’s playing to shine individually.” Over the song’s four-plus minute runtime, it’s possible to get lost in the dual string instruments’ interplay and feel like drifting off into the sea as the title implies. However, the interplay between Woods and Williams leads to an ebb and flow suggesting that their version of “drifting” is anything but a passive, monotonous affair.
“Family Farm”, The Hold Steady From Open Door Policy (2021, Positive Jams)
We’ve reached the third Hold Steady song on this playlist, and the most “Hold Steady” Hold Steady song to hold steady on this playlist. With triumphant horns and ringing piano, “Family Farm” has everything you’d expect musically except for the anthemic chorus, settling for a mostly-instrumental refrain instead. Meanwhile, Craig Finn throws some compelling images out—the titular “Family Farm” is not literal but due to an unreliable narrator it’s unclear exactly what it is, a nurse listens to Van Halen on shitty cell phone speakers, and the woman praying before taking a shot of god-knows-what is a reminder that all your funny Hold Steady parody lyrics will never be able to out-Finn the man himself.
“Blue (In A Major)”, LULA From Cabin Fever Dreamin’ (2020, Safe Suburban Home)
A late addition to the playlist, the Swedish-Australian garage rockers of LULA gleefully blast through the hooky “Blue (In a Major)” and do their best to lodge it into your head the whole two-and-a-half-minute runtime. Their strongest weapons are the half-sneering, Thermals-esque vocals of frontman Jake Farrugia (the Australian) and a surprising incorporation of a guiro throughout the song. It’s both my favorite song from and an accurate representative of Cabin Fever Dreamin’, which came out a few months ago but just got a cassette re-release from Safe Suburban Home if that’s your thing.
“Tall Order”, Nature’s Neighbor (2021, Tai Duo Music)
When I’m paring down these playlists to a “brief, manageable” two hours, seven-minute numbers are usually first on the chopping block, so the appearance of “Tall Order” here alone is a testament to its quality. If I’m reading the song’s Bandcamp description right, this song was recorded during the sessions for Nature’s Neighbor’s next full length album, Otherside, but is a standalone single rather than a preview of that record. If there’s any song on here that would stand up on its own it’s “Tall Order”, a dense, multi-movement suite of a song that builds electronic beats, piano, synths, and more traditional rock instrumentation all on top of each other, pulls it all away, and builds it up again across its runtime.
“Cover Song”, Mister Goblin From Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is theDevil (2021, Exploding in Sound)
“Fuck it, never mind” is the key lyric from “Cover Song”, an acoustic late-album highlight from Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil. The song is one part tender recollection of an unidentified individual that gets swallowed up in service of the safe, the familiar, the known. In this case, that means covering a song that “everybody likes”, your Freebirds, Blackbirds, and In My Lives, as Mr. Goblin intones over the song’s bridge.
“I’ve Got Some Friends”, Akron/Family From Love Is Simple (2007, Young God)
Despite the fact that you’re reading a music blog at this very moment, it’s not the 2000s anymore. While I have no intentions of glorifying that age of indie/alternative/underground/whatever music, I would like to question the degree to which that era has been discarded for “90’s revivalism”—as if the former, precariously-propped up by nascent institutions that have largely flamed or fizzled out, was ever on the same footing as the major-label bloat of the latter. This is to say—Akron/Family were never really “that band” for me, but if you lived through that decade or through its aftershocks, you have a few “that band”s, and I know A/F was “that band” for a lot of people. It is also to say: rest in peace, Miles Seaton. Even if I didn’t think the obvious choice for this playlist, “Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Already Dead”, was too on-the-nose for the occasion, I think I would still want to highlight “I’ve Got Some Friends” in its delirious, absurdly joyful glory.
In the fifth installment of Pressing Concerns, I highlight new albums by Mister Goblin, Nightshift, The Hold Steady, and Styrofoam Winos, and also discuss a compilation cassette of Kittyhawk’s non-LP material and the 25th anniversary reissue and remaster of Bailter Space’s Wammo.
Be sure to check out previous editions of Pressing Concerns for more good new music from the past two (or so) months. After doing three of these posts for three consecutive weeks (and each longer than the last), this column will probably be taking a week or two off. Nothing I’m certain I’m going to cover releases until March 19th, so in theory it could be until then, but don’t be surprised if it comes back a bit earlier. In the meantime, look out for a playlist post or two in the coming weeks—one of what I’m listening to at the moment and another that’s a time capsule/archival playlist.
Mister Goblin – Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil
Release date: February 19th Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: Post-hardcore, indie folk pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: At Least
Over a decade or so of making music with suburban D.C.’s Two Inch Astronaut and on his own as Mister Goblin, Sam Goblin has honed in on a recognizable sound, led by his golden, effortlessly melodic voice combined with thorny guitar and rhythm sections reminiscent of several bands from the local Dischord Records roster. Since making Mister Goblin his primary outlet, however, he’s increasingly mixed in different elements into his music—acoustic instrumentation, some drum machines here and there—while still keeping a foot in the post-hardcore department. The excellent Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil feels like the Goblin’s fullest realization yet of these new components.
There has always been a theatrical streak to the bands and projects fronted by Sam Goblin (not unlike another D.C.-area band, Shudder to Think). Two Inch Astronaut’s “Play to No One” added a positively musical-worthy sensibility to the decidedly unglamorous life of empty basement shows, and Four People in an Elevator… makes this undercurrent delightfully explicit with “Hook in the Eye”. The song is a character sketch about a wannabe actor who rationalizes his job as a predatory telephone scammer by acting as if it’s all one grand performance, and its proclamation of “This is my theater, your landline my stage” lends an absurd gravity to trying to trick an 80-year old grandparent into handing over the keys to their bank account.
Despite being a step forward, “Hook in the Eye” eventually does revolve into a classic Two Inch Astronaut-esque torching outro, which puts it closer to Sam Goblin’s origins than the majority of …Elevator… The entirely acoustic “Cover Song” sets itself up in “Play to No One” country but, rather than proudly wear its chip on its shoulder, it quietly looks out upon and contemplates a “tedious apocalypse” soundtracked by “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Freebird”. The mortally wounded bird of “Cardboard Box” ends its life (and the album) on its own terms over programmed beats and string accents. And I haven’t even covered two of the strongest songwriting flexes in “Six Flags America” (which I’ve already written about) and “At Least” (which I will write about soon). Coming in at less than a half hour in length and only available physically as a cassette, Four People… could’ve easily come across as a stopgap or lower-stakes release, but this album is the real deal. Sam Goblin has put together a collection of songs with appeal well beyond that of the underground alt-rock circuit without abandoning the strongest aspects of his past successes. (Bandcamp link)
Nightshift – Zöe
Release date: February 26th Record label: Trouble in Mind Genre: Post-punk, no wave indie pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Outta Space
For their second album, Glasgow’s Nightshift have fashioned together an inviting collection of minimalist indie rock songs from unlikely sources. Zöe pulls from lofty places both musically and conceptually, but still leaves the gates wide open for the listener. Nightshift cite the abrasion of “No New York/early Sonic Youth/This Heat” as the starting point for the band, but they’ve strayed quite a bit aways from point A in their two years of existence. That footprint is still there, but they’ve molded these tools into the melodic, utilitarian pop structures harkening to Young Marble Giants or Marine Girls. The transition reminds me of last year’s releases by Magik Markers, although Nightshift’s songs come across as more deliberate and calculated than 2020’s compromised experimentation did.
Zöe is an album where many, many instrumental and vocal parts come unadorned, placed front and center for the listener to take in. The pressure is on to take full advantage of this prime real estate, and in this Nightshift deliver—hooks pervade the waters of Zöe. “There’s no air in outer space, there’s no air in outer space” floats over tick-ticking rhythms and easily into my head over and over again, while the cycling guitar riffs from the album’s first two songs are as memorable as the accompanying hypnotic recitations of the songs’ titles. Despite the amount of empty space on Zöe, there are plenty of inspired instrumental choices—the liberal clarinet on early highlight “Spray Paint the Bridge” helps the song bend but not break in its second half, and later helps accent the spoken-word musings of “Make Kin” (which is also the album’s “rave up” song, in my view).
Though Zöe hits right out of the gate with three ace variations on their concoction of influences, the most ear-catching number comes at the start of the record’s second half: the 7-minute “Power Cut”, which casually stretches out to twice the average Zöe song length like it’s nothing. The steady, buzzing synths and rhythmic backbone steer “Power Cut” nearly into krautrock territory, despite not deviating too far from the rest of the album. If the more insular nature of Zöe’s last couple of songs initially feels kind of slight in comparison, this is more a reflection on the instantaneous (ahem) power of “Power Cut” rather than a weak ending. The aptly-titled confusing swirl of “Romantic Mud” particularly revealed itself to me with repeated listens, and the shuffling title track feels like a logical deconstruction of the album’s earlier accessible bits. The ethereal yet grounded Zöe is a sculpture of an album that doesn’t hide what makes it worth appreciating. (Bandcamp link)
Kittyhawk – Mikey’s Favorite Songs (2012-2016)
Release date: February 26th Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Indie emo rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: The First One
Chicago’s Kittyhawk—like any good emo-tinged DIY indie rock band from the past decade—amassed a collection of songs over their initial four-year ride which rivals that of their proper LP output. And Count Your Lucky Stars—like any good DIY label in the service of emo-tinged DIY indie rock—has helpfully compiled all thirteen of them in one place, the Mikey’s Favorite Songs cassette. The band’s lineup connects them to such notable names as Pet Symmetry, Dowsing, and Into It. Over It., but Mikey’s Favorite Songs reveals a band with its own unique footprint, anchored by the voice of frontwoman Kate Grube and an interest in classic pop songcraft.
The tape’s first five songs comprise their 2012 debut EP, which makes it clear that Kittyhawk had hit on something right out of the gate. It kicks off with the most straightforwardly sweet song here, the infectious (and correctly-titled) “The First One”. The rest of the EP puts up the other core tent poles of their sound, with the moody dual vocals of “Older/Wiser” (Guitarist/vocalist Erik Czaja cites the underappreciated Rainer Maria as an influence for this one, and I certainly hear it) and the dramatic rocker “He Travels in a Suit”. The rest of the compilation is built from various-artist compilation appearances, splits, and singles. It doesn’t hang together in the same way that the Kittyhawk EP songs do (unsurprisingly, as these songs weren’t meant to), but it does find the band stretching out a bit more to rewarding results. The songs become a little more complex despite still being recognizably Kittyhawk—“The Green” liberally piles on to its steady, driving drumbeat for two minutes, while the various sprawling, intricate parts of “The Daily Dodger” can make one’s head spin in a good way. And I will always have a soft spot for “Soft Serve”, my introduction to Kittyhawk via the Sundae Bloody Sundae split single.
It’s always going to be a bit odd to hear a Christmas song smack dab in the middle of Mikey’s Favorite Songs, but the tape’s primary purpose is making Kittyhawk’s stray recordings easier for us all to access, and given that I will now be happy to add their fuzz-pop version of “Silver Bells” into my future holiday rotation, it succeeds on this front. The other cover, a heartbreakingly slow version of The Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hanging On”, actually does work as an album closer—if for no other reason than I’m not sure how you’d follow it. Kittyhawk are, as I understand it, back together after a three-year pause, and perhaps we will get new material out of their second act. Whatever the future holds, the material on Mikey’s Favorite Songs reveals a past that’s worth a good, long look back. (Bandcamp link)
The Hold Steady – Open Door Policy
Release date: February 19th Record label: Positive Jams/Thirty Tigers Genre: The Hold Steady Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Lanyards
I could go on for four times the length of this entire post about my relationship with The Hold Steady, Craig Finn, and its many peaks and valleys over the last decade or so, but I will try to keep most of this about the new album itself. By way of introduction I will say that after nearly disintegrating with the twin “mixed reception” records Heaven Is Whenever (underrated) and Teeth Dreams (no comment) in the first half of the 2010s, their return to form in the decade’s latter half has been a relief to people like me—“Entitlement Crew” in 2017 turned trepidation into anticipation for new Hold Steady music, and the half-album, half-singles-comp Thrashing Thru the Passion fully delivered in 2019.
Open Door Policy, then, is the band’s first attempt to create an entire LP’s worth of songs that work together in seven years, and after Passion proved them capable of flexing the right muscles, ODP is their bid to try evolution once more. The band seems to have learned after Teeth Dreams that it would be unwise to try to bury the most unique and important part of their music (Craig Finn’s speak-singing lyrics); Open Door Policy thusly begins with much higher floor than that record. Instead, the most notable departure seems to be the lower ratio of unapologetic sing-along choruses than their mid-2000s work and Passion. The worst-case scenario for this Hold Understated would be the weakest moments in Finn’s solo albums: well-written but musically generic. Thankfully, though, it’s more analogous to the highlights of those records—in fact, it could be seen as a convergence of Finn’s most recent and best solo album (2019’s I Need a New War, which contained more tuneful moments than the two previous ones) with the Hold Steady’s full band power.
The opening sequence of the album is a big commander of attention, but not in typical Hold Steady fashion. We get two conceptual numbers—opener “The Feelers” is no “Stuck Between Stations” or “Constructive Summer”, while the dark “Spices” harkens back to Separation Sunday, but not to any of that album’s most immediately accessible parts. I respect these and appreciate the color it adds to Open Door Policy, but it wouldn’t work if they didn’t let loose and run up the score with new classic Hold Steady moves in the album’s center—and they do. The run from “Lanyards” to “Heavy Covenant” rivals any stretch from the band’s “golden” period, and they do it by nailing left turns (“Unpleasant Breakfast”), very clear callbacks (“Family Farm”), and in-betweeners (“Heavy Covenant”) alike.
With that out of their system, the band ends Open Door Policy with some more puzzles to sort out. “Me & Magdalena” contains some of Craig Finn’s best storytelling on the album, and I’m still trying to sort out how “Hanover Camera” and “Riptown” fit in with both that song and the earlier tracks. And those are the twin pillars of The Hold Steady—Finn leaving lyrical breadcrumbs that make the listener want to go back, and the rest of the band making it feel anything but academic or laborious to do so. Nearing two decades together, they’re still working with the same roadmap, but aren’t afraid to annotate it, circling new routes and marking out all the diners that serve gross toast. (Bandcamp link)
Styrofoam Winos – Styrofoam Winos
Release date: February 12th Record label: Sophomore Lounge Genre: Alt-country, indie folk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Skyline Top Removal
A supergroup of sorts, Nashville’s Styrofoam Winos have been notably cosigned by Rosy Overdrive favorite Simon Joyner (who has also written favorably of member Lou Turner’s solo work). Featuring three songwriters with notable discographies of their own—Turner, Joe Kenkel, and Trevor Nikrant—Styrofoam Winos has a lot to pack into its 40 minutes, and it certainly sounds like it. Just in the first three songs, they rip through the country-fried egg punk of “Stuck in a Museum”, the charming southern folk duet of “In Your Room”, and the plaintive, Tweedy-esque “Once”. Most impressively is “Skyline Top Removal”, which marries the record’s brightest and most pleasing music with its most striking images and biting lyrics (“It was built on the backs of the underpaid….but isn’t it minimal? Isn’t it great?”, chiefly, not to mention the song title itself) to make a modern southern-urban classic.
Styrofoam Winos floats away after that, the instrumental “Open Mic” giving way to a final trio of songs that make good use of the group’s subtler tendencies. The light strumming and caught-in-a-moment reflections of “Maybe More” shine the brightest for me, while album closer “Wrong Season’s Length” builds around mundane observation with strings and piano to remind me of another Nashville mainstay, Lambchop. Even though I find myself gravitating towards these quieter numbers on average, Styrofoam Winos stick out due to their ability to nail both those and, say, the fuzzy “School in the Morning” in the same breath. (Bandcamp link)
Bailter Space – Wammo (25th Anniversary Reissue)
Release date: February 12th Record label: Matador Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Colours
New Zealand’s Bailter Space will—due to their place of birth, time on the Flying Nun label, and some personnel overlap—forever be associated with the scrappy jangle pop of Dunedin Sound bands like The Chills, The Bats, and The Clean, but they have always drawn from heavier musical influences than those bands generally did. Dating back to their proto-Bailter Space band, Gordons, in the 1980s, they’ve filled their albums with various concentrations of noise rock and reverb. 1995’s Wammo, reissued this month by Matador Records as part of their “Revisionist History” series, is their most accessible effort of their initial run, their rightfully most-revered single LP and their nearest brush with indie rock immortality. The fuzz-drenched production is still there, but underneath lie several excellent pop songs. The starry-eyed “Splat” and the wistful “Glimmer” could’ve been vintage shoegaze anthems a la Ride, while “At Five We Drive” recalls Sonic Youth circa their populist 1990 peak just as the actual Sonic Youth were retreating into experimentation and opacity. The defiant “Voltage” near the end of the album indicated their deconstructive streak hadn’t been completely buried, but they follow this with the exuberant 6-minute romp of “D Thing”, recalling a slightly shier version of Eleventh Dream Day’s Neil Young-influenced freak-outs. Wammo does not have the indie rock footprint of some of the other albums in Matador’s reissue series like Alien Lanes or Electr-o-Pura, but I take their point wholeheartedly that what Bailter Space accomplished with this album deserves to be celebrated 25 years down the line. (Bandcamp link)
We are back again! In this fourth, mid-February installment of Pressing Concerns, I highlight the third album from Virginia’s The Crowd Scene, the first solo record from Anika Pyle (Katie Ellen/Chumped), the second album from janglers The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, the reissue of 90’s queercore band Longstocking’s discography, and a new release from the lo-fi pop stylings of The Fragiles. You aren’t gonna want to miss any of these albums, folks. You’ll want to be sitting down for this. You’re going to be on the edge of –oh, just read these.
If you can’t get enough of album roundup posts, be sure to check out previous Pressing Concerns entries. I’m hoping that the next edition goes out roughly a week from when this one goes live, so watch this space!
The Crowd Scene – South Circular
Release date: December 11th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, orchestral pop Formats: CD, digital Pull track: Soho Square
Virginia-by-way-of-England band The Crowd Scene certainly work at their own pace. Their debut album, Turn Left at Greenland, was released in 1998, and their sophomore effort followed merely a decade later. With this in mind, I think Rosy Overdrive can be forgiven for being a couple months late to December 2020’s South Circular, their third LP. Led by the duo of Grahame Davies and Anne Rogers, South Circular clearly takes influence from the lush orchestral pop of the early Rock era, but the time period it takes me back to above all else is the early 2000s, when troubadours like Brendan Benson and Elliott Smith could find success by marrying their smartly-penned tunes with cherry-picked pop production and instrumentation from decades past and present.
The album starts with the airy, minimalist “Mistake I Had to Make” that’s reminiscent of the lounge-pop of Ivy or even a trimmed Stereolab, but this is either a red herring or an example of The Crowd Scene’s dexterity depending on your point of view. By the halfway mark, they’ve already run through the twang of “Too Late to Send Letters”, the bright hues of “Soho Square”, and the closest thing South Circular has to a straight-up rocker in the extended guitar soloing of “Records You Love the Most”. Davies’ clear and ageless lead vocals throughout the record remind me of Jon Brion’s solo work, while the languid “You Can Always Come Home” would fit right at home on an album by one of Brion’s frequent collaborators, Aimee Mann. The around-the-fire, reflective acoustic closer “Brotherhood of the Leaky Boot” sounds like something off of Paul McCartney’s latest album, which South Circular actually predates by a week. Time is a funny thing. The Crowd Scene has shown throughout their career that they don’t allow themselves to be controlled by it, and with South Circular they’ve put together a collection of ten strong songs that will help them weather it. (Bandcamp link)
Anika Pyle – Wild River
Release date: February 12th Record label: June/Quote Unquote Genre: Indie folk, synthpop, spoken word Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Emerald City
Anika Pyle spent the majority of the 2010s fronting emo-tinged DIY punk bands Chumped and Katie Ellen, far from household names but revered in certain circles and widely influential in several scenes, particularly in her current stomping grounds of Philadelphia. That someone as musically active as Pyle has finally made her first solo album isn’t surprising, especially as it’s inching up on four years since the last full-length she was involved with (Katie Ellen’s sole LP). Wild River, however, is not the “Anika Pyle solo album” that a casual Chumped or Katie Ellen listener might conjure up in their head. It’s a sparse album, built from minimal synths, quiet acoustic guitar, and Pyle’s words—often spoken, but even when sung landing as evocative and arresting as her poetry does.
This didn’t exactly come out of nowhere—Katie Ellen was just as likely to break out the acoustics and slow the tempo down as they were to rip like Chumped, but that seemed like such a natural progression for Pyle that I didn’t notice it too much. With Wild River, however, we’re confronted with this dimension of Pyle’s songwriting head-on. The album’s musical palette is, to me, reminiscent of Allison Crutchfield, another pop punker who made the transition to solo album by embracing a similar toolbox. Lyrically and thematically, however, comparisons to Wild River fall flat—it is a deeply personal record that could only have been made by Pyle herself.
Turning down the amps on one’s music and “pivoting to synthpop” conjure images of trying to make a finished product that’s more widely palatable for mass consumption, potent if successfully threaded but at its worst merely wallpaper to blend into the background of a mood playlist or melodrama. Wild River is no such compromise—Anika Pyle uses her new music vocabulary to command your full attention. Spoken word pieces, recurring themes, and an unflinching account of a very real loss make Wild River nothing short of active listening. This is not to say that individual songs from it can’t stand on their own—“Emerald City” and “Haiku for Everything You Loved and Miss” are, in their own way, confident, modern pop songs. It is to say that as powerful as “Orange Flowers” is by itself, hearing it immediately after “Mexican Restaurant Where I Last Saw My Father” stirs up emotion that musicians rarely attempt to stir, let alone succeed in doing. “The significance of letting a grown man cry” carries that much more heft. It is to say that “Look up, you dummy” and “Life is a funny haha” become more than just single lines as you carry them with you throughout Wild River. It’s music that will make you appreciate a piece of pie—like, really appreciate—and there’s nothing stronger than that. (Bandcamp link)
The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness – Songs from Another Life
Release date: February 5th Record label: Bobo Integral Genre: Jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Can’t You See?
When Teenage Fanclub put out their breakthrough Bandwagonesque in 1991, it was so widely anointed a spiritual sequel to Big Star’s three-album run in the 1970s that Big Star itself acknowledged this fact in a reissue’s liner notes. While the Fannies have thankfully stayed together long after their initial rise, this has nevertheless not prevented The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness from submitting their bid to become third-generation torchbearers. And what a bid it is—Songs from Another Life’s all-too-short runtime is stuffed to the brim with jangling guitars, beautiful vocal melodies, and bright, shiny numbers with titles like “Waking Up in the Sunshine” and “Summer” that still somehow have a melancholy cloud hanging over them.
The Teenage Fanclub comparisons are unavoidable, right down to the Scottish accent of Andrew Taylor, one half of the duo behind TBWTPN. But Taylor and his counterpart, Gonzalo Marcos, know better than to stake their reputation on one act (of course, so did TFC look elsewhere than Big Star to draw from their sound). They cite both other mile markers in their jangle pop lineage (The Beach Boys, The Byrds, R.E.M.) as well as offshoots from it (Dinosaur Jr., Weezer, Fountains of Wayne)—and the synth accents of the album’s final two songs suggest that they’re no Luddites on principle. TBWTPN work very hard to wring genuinely affecting emotional material from these well-worn tools, and their best moments are completely transcendent. The under-two-minute plea of “Can’t You See?” is instantly memorable, and the way they subtly shift from “urgent” to “contemplative” for the following track (“Rose Tinted Glass”) without fundamentally changing up their sound is deft indeed. There’s very little not to like about Songs from Another Life. (Bandcamp link)
Longstocking – Once Upon a Time Called Now and Singles & Demos: 1994-1998
Release date: February 5th Record label: Jealous Butcher Genre: Queercore, riot grrl Formats: Vinyl/digital (Once Upon a Time Called Now), digital (Singles & Demos) Pull track: Jehu on a Rollercoaster
The first reissue I’m covering in Pressing Concerns is a monster. Los Angeles’s Longstocking released one album (1997’s Once Upon a Time Called Now) and a handful of singles before disintegrating as the century turned. Some members of the band, mainly lead vocalist and primary songwriter Tamala Poljak, later showed up in other bands afterwards, but during their brief, obscure run, Longstocking put together a reappraisal-worthy body of work. Jealous Butcher Records has risen to the task, putting out a remastered reissue of their sole LP, and appending a digital compilation of the rest of their recordings (Singles & Demos: 1994-1998) for good measure—all of which presents a picture of a band that achieved plenty in a short period of time.
The most immediately striking thing about Once Upon a Time Called Now is just how good it sounds. Musically and vocally, this could’ve been a major label release, sounding just as close to The Breeders as Bratmobile, if not closer. This is a function of recording and producing choices, of course, but also the songs themselves. Barely half a minute into “Jehu on a Rollercoaster”, they pull out all the stops on the chorus: plenty of “ooh”s, vocal harmonies, guitar-stab underscores. This is the first indication of what exactly Longstocking are capable of, but not the last—“Goddess, Pt. 4” is coming up, its “you look like a goddess, Shakespeare wrote about you in his sonnets” refrain being, if anything, the polar opposite of holier-than-thou punk posturing. If that alone wasn’t enough to put them in the pantheon of queercore royalty, Poljack kicks it over the finish line with the ripping alt-rock of “Not a Jerk”. Once Upon a Time Called Now is a half-hour all-killer, no-filler statement, and I’d recommend it to anyone who cares about punk or indie rock music. Singles & Demos: 1994-1998 is more optional listening—the early versions of the songs that would end up on the LP are interesting, but don’t merit many repeat spins for me. The compilation’s originals, however, contain quite a few gems. While not as cohesive or polished as the studio album, songs like the swinging “Rocking Chair” and the busy “Chance to Laugh” are as well-written as anything on Once Upon a Time, and you could fashion a nearly-as-worthy collection of songs from the recording dump presented.
Riot grrl is on track to become reissued and repackaged just about as much as the original wave of punk rock has suffered through, as it arrives at its mid-life crisis of large-scale reunion tours and being namedropped by celebrities for cool points. Longstocking’s discography, however, in all its original glory, is a breath of fresh air from all that burgeoning cultural baggage. Once Upon a Time Called Now serves as a reminder of everything good and powerful that triggered the gold rush around the scene in the first place, as well as proving just how important a second glance with the benefit of time can be to understanding and appreciating an album. Once Upon a Time Called Now planted itself a ways off from MOR mainstream palatability, but was still a little too glossy for a movement that, even among the wider landscape of punk rock, stood out for its disinterest in concessions. The great trash compactor of time has crushed all these once-binding genres and scene dividers together. Longstocking, regardless of when and where they were, made a strong collection of songs that stand up against any rock music coming out over two decades later. (Album Bandcamp link) (Singles compilation Bandcamp link)
The Fragiles – On and On
Release date: February 12th Record label: Living Lost Genre: Fuzz rock, lo-fi rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Kaleidoscope
David Settle continues to keep busy. Last year he released two albums as Psychic Flowers (which ended up on my best of 2020 list) as well as another solid record from the longer-running Big Heet. This time it’s The Fragiles’ (mostly Settle, with a couple drum credits and a lead guitar credit) turn to drop an album with On and On, which continues the pop songwriting Psychic Flowers explored but also allows itself to stretch out a bit more than that project’s ramshackle nature. It’s all still very lo-fi, 8-tracked and all that, but that doesn’t constrain Settle’s dynamic ambitions—see opening with the five-minute, slow burn (for this kind of music, at least) of a title track before letting loose with fuzzy power pop of “Kaleidoscope”, a lead single if I’ve ever heard one.
One of the clearest influences on The Fragiles is Martin Newell, with On and On coming off as a scuzzier Cleaners from Venus on several occasions. The pastoral “Garden of Cleaners” is the lyrically explicit tribute, but to my ears “Armistice Day” (which shares a title with a Cleaners song) is the real dead ringer, the way it builds around a simple, catchy riff and then spends the rest of the song alternatively riding it out and trying to knock it off balance. This will only get you so far, however—if there’s a comparison point for the lumbering “Success Is…” on one of Newell’s albums, I haven’t heard it. Since time seems to be the unofficial theme of this post, I’m pleased that the album brings it all together again at the end with “Hourglass”, which calls back to the previously-mentioned “Kaleidoscope” and trades in the kind of beautiful existentialism of The Chills and Flying Nun Records—two more shadows cast over this album. Whatever the moniker, it’s another worthy effort from Settle and his collaborators. (Bandcamp link)
We’ve broached February, and I am once again here to tell you about the good music from the recent past, present, and future. The third installment of Pressing Concerns is a little smaller than the first two, but let’s just say we’re dealing with a “quality over quantity” scenario (which is somewhat amusing considering the final entry on this list). In this post, I review the exciting debut album from Editrix, try to explain why Yasmin Williams has been the artist I’ve listened to the most over these past two weeks, learn about sporting trivia from Captain Frederickson, and ruminate on a curiosity of a release from the prolific Hello Whirled.
It remains to be seen whether four albums over six is merely the product of how things shook out this time or the future of this format, but I will say that the back half of February is stuffed with potential entries to this column, so you will be hearing from Pressing Concerns fairly soon in one form or another.
Be sure to check out the previoustwo Pressing Concerns posts, both from January, if you haven’t already and just, like, need more.
Editrix – Tell Me I’m Bad
Release date: February 5th Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: Avant-jazz-math-pop-junk, post-punk, chillwave(?) Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: The Sound
Editrix are a power trio of sorts, voiced by Wendy Eisenberg (whose excellent solo album Auto made my end-of-year list in 2020). You could say that Tell Me I’m Bad sounds like a beefed-up Auto and be right on some level, but that doesn’t really do justice to all that’s going on here, particularly what the other two pieces—drummer Josh Daniel and bassist Steve Cameron bring to the table. Tell Me I’m Bad somehow pushes forward on both the chaotic and catchy ends of the spectrum, dealing in guitar squalls and a kinetic rhythm section that nevertheless do not get in the way of Eisenberg’s strong vocal hooks. Nearly as effective as the hooks are Eisenberg’s memorable lyrics, which frequently serve as one-liner mile markers between instrumental breaks (Samples include: “What kind of monster makes the summer last forever”, “What’s your moon, what’s your sun, what’s your rising—stop hiding”, and all of “Bad Breath”).
The one-two punch of “She Wants to Go and Party” and the near-masterpiece “The History of Dance” suggest Editrix is dead serious about not being serious, but check the blistering, anti-capitalist “Chelsea” lest you get lulled into any sort of anything. Bands who claim prog influence but still trade in reasonable song lengths intrigue me, and Tell Me I’m Bad backs this up through technical expertise by everybody involved as well as frequent left turns, like when “Sinner” morphs into a bizzaro marching number in its second half. There are moments—such as the one-liner drop and subsequent instrumental rave-up of “Instant”—that remind me of a zippier Grifters, while the sing-song vocals fitted into the margins of “Anna K” are reminiscent of Eisenberg’s old band, Birthing Hips. It’s hard not to think of fellow Bostonians Squitch at that band’s most raucous, but Tell Me I’m Bad also has the warped pop ambitions of Palberta5000. It’s like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle—jagged edges, rewarding, greater than the sum of its parts. (Bandcamp link)
Yasmin Williams – Urban Driftwood
Release date: January 29th Record label: SPINSTER Genre: Fingerstyle acoustic guitar Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Swift Breeze
Urban Driftwood is the kind of album that can stop you in your tracks. It’s the kind of album that could inspire a writer who has never attempted to tackle any instrumental music to give it a shot in an effort to capture just a little bit of what I find special about it. It hooked me from the beginning—the way the quiet picking on opening track “Sunshowers” gives way, about a minute in, to a giddily melodic riff and adds on from there. The way the other bookend to the album, closer “After the Storm”, similarly builds around a memorable melody but delivers it in a more subdued, relieved manner. These are songs, and they communicate their ideas, themes, and throughlines just as well as does any other album on this list, perhaps better.
Despite my praise for how it starts and ends, for me, the album towers the most in its midsection. “Swift Breeze”, which begins with a busy, squeaky intro, soars when Yasmine Williams launches into the arresting tap-heavy main instrumental part of the song, all the while not losing any steam from the introduction. “Adrift”, featuring cello accompaniment from Taryn Wood, builds into a swirling number that intertwines both instruments, but its slower tempo also allows Wood’s and Williams’s playing to shine individually. Williams chooses her accompaniments wisely, not being overly wedded to a one-person show but also confidently knowing her playing could carry the entire album and not allowing too much to get in the way of it. The only other featured credit is the title track, featuring djembe and cadjembe from Amadou Kouyate in what amounts to a powerful homage to West African musical tradition. I am not sure what the ceiling is in 2021 for the kind of music that Yasmin Williams makes, but Urban Driftwood makes it feel like the stratosphere. (Bandcamp link)
Captain Frederickson – Absolute Disaster
Release date: February 12th Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-punk, noise rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Ant & Dec Break America
I don’t really know what goes on up there in Buffalo—I’ve never been close enough to reach the signal of anything remotely CBC-related. If I’d had to guess, though, I would’ve said more “sleepy, snowy village”, and very little like anything depicted in the arched-eyebrowed, noise-mumble-rockers Captain Frederickson’s manifesto Absolute Disaster. In a move that will shake out to be either incredibly canny or deeply misguided, Captain make a bid for both-sides-of-the-pond dominance, penning tributes to cricket player Ben Stokes and (British) footballer Stuart Pearce (“Ben Stokes” and “He’s Got to Go to Middlesbrough and Get Something”) while planting one foot stateside in their paean to the (American football team) Buffalo Bills and their fanbase in “Get the Tables”. I’ve learned so much already!
The real draw here, however, is the frequently overpowering music the band cook up, which ping pongs between straightforward garage rock and distorted synths and drum machines, and even ends with a straight-up piano ballad in “I Used to Be Over”. I’m more predisposed to like something meaty like “Didn’t Get All of It”, but there’s something oddly…hypnotic about some of the more experimental fare. One might find themselves smirking at C.F. bragging about their song being a certified banger in “Certified Banger” over what’s mostly percussion, but, well, maybe they’re onto something. Why wouldn’t it be one? Yes, to the top of the charts it goes. (Bandcamp link)
Hello Whirled – Down on Sex and Romance
Release date: January 30th Record label: Self-released Genre: Lo-fi, power pop Formats: Digital (free) Pull track: White World
I have to include this project (“album” doesn’t quite cover it) just for the sheer scope and ambition of it. It’s a 64-song, career-spanning Robert Pollard cover album recorded by, as far as I can tell, just one person from New Jersey. And these are all pretty deep Pollard cuts here—the casual Guided by Voices fan might recognize two, three songs here tops. What’s the most well-known song on Down on Sex and Romance—Chicken Blows? The Brides Have Hit Glass?
I am not near to tell you that H. World, Ben Spizuco, has beaten his biggest influence at performing his own songs, or that each of these 64 covers unlocks an exciting new dimension to the original (although quite a few of them do). Spizuco doesn’t have the vocal range of Pollard, but this is only overtly noticeable on a couple of the ballads. The album’s at its best when it’s triumphantly plowing through rockers like “Expecting Brainchild”, “Useless Inventions”, and “White World”. That it dresses up over 30 years of varying lineups, songwriting partners, and recording techniques in the same lo-fi clothing is a feature to my ears rather than a bug. Whether these songs were originally recorded in a slick studio, in a basement with friends, or alone on a 4-track, Spizuco provides the throughline—it’s all Pollard. Something from Alien Lanes isn’t more sacred than something from Force Fields at Home on Down on Sex and Romance—why shouldn’t they sit side by side? All of it adds up to an almost-69 Love Songs tribute to one of the few songwriters who inspires the devotion necessary to see through such an endeavor and has the back catalog to make it possible. (Bandcamp link)
Good morning/afternoon, readers. I am back with again with my monthly exorcism of all the music I absorbed over the past 31 days. January was very much a month of transition—with regards to what music I was listening to, I mean. In terms of new releases, you’ll find some 2020 stragglers as well as brand new, hot off the presses January 2021 drops, and in terms of older music, I finished up my 1995 deep dive and began my investigation into 1991 (which was thirty years ago, folks!).
Several of these songs appeared on albums I wrote up in Pressing Concerns—I will spend a little less time going over those. Cicala, Swamp Dogg, Palberta, Home Blitz, Tucker Riggleman & the Cheap Dates, and Kiwi Jr. both get two selections this time around. The next Rosy Overdrive post will probably be an album roundup post sometime Mid-February.
“Truck Stop”, Cicala From Cicala (2021, Acrobat Unstable)
We’re starting 2021 in medias res—more specifically, at a truck stop in Oklahoma. We’re also hitting up a Taco Bell in California, a rest stop in Minnesota, and we might be falling in love with Carolina (the states). This song isn’t really a love song to the open road (“Find someone I like enough / And live off the land as much as I can” muses Quinn Cicala at one point, but it’s clear from the rest of the number that they’re spitballing here). However, it does cause some unintentional nostalgia for this writer who used to split their time between three states and would routinely follow the strings that bound me to them via interstates, but…you know…
“The Heart of Human Trafficking”, Chris Brokaw From Puritan (2021, 12XU)
If I were to be so generous as to allow myself to label one song from each of these 30-plus-song playlists an “epic”, “The Heart of Human Trafficking” is January 2021’s epic. Although it doesn’t directly recall any of the bands in which Chris Brokaw made a name for himself during the 90s and 00s (Come, Codeine, The New Year), it still feels drawn from the same era, where Neil Young-influenced indie rock bands were creating exciting guitar workouts—see Silkworm, Dino Jr., Built to Spill, not to mention Thurston Moore’s solo work and Sonic Youth contributions. The titular heart of human trafficking, according to Brokaw, is “deep in the jungle”, which I guess I’ll have to take his word on that, but it does remind me of Pere Ubu’s “Heart of Darkness”—certainly not a bad thing.
“Trouble”, Hen Ogledd From Free Humans (2020, Domino)
Free Humans is a bonkers double album—I can’t get too much into it because these playlist posts take long enough even just restricting myself to the songs at hand. Suffice it to say: there are a lot of successes over that album’s 79 minutes, but “Trouble” is something else entirely. This is a perfect pop song! The first of three on this playlist. This song’s nearly six minutes long and it still feels like they could’ve coasted on that beautiful chorus for even longer. For some reason, I cannot get it out of my head that this would make an excellent country song—maybe Sturgill Simpson could cover it on a future bluegrass album and turn those synth breakdowns into dueling banjo/fiddle parts…which is not to say that the song needs improved at all.
“Who Do They Think They Are”, Swamp Dogg From Surfin’ in Harlem (1991, Volt)
I’m not sure why Surfin’ in Harlem isn’t traditionally listed among Jerry Williams Jr.’s best albums. I could hazard a few guesses—timeline-wise, it came out at a time when there didn’t seem much interest in Swamp Dogg (something that has thankfully shifted in recent years), and the 10-minute “Appelle Moi-Noir” (“Call Me Black”) probably would make certainly folks uncomfortable. Nevertheless this might be my favorite Dogg album I’ve heard other than Total Destruction to Your Mind, and “Who Do They Think They Are” is the perfect vintage Dogg tune to kick it off. There are no traces whatsoever of late 80s production on here, which probably got the record shrugged off at the time but has of course aged quite well.
“Summer Sun”, Palberta From Palberta5000 (2021, Wharf Cat)
In my Palberta5000 writeup, I said “the 90-second stomper ‘Summer Sun’ just might be the most fully-developed pop song of them all”. The more I hear it the more I find to enjoy from it. The main vocal melody and inflection sounds like it could’ve been copied and pasted from a vintage Sheryl Crow song, the backing vocals have a girl-group vibe going on, and while the ramshackle instrumentation initially seems like the foil, it never falls apart or goes anarchic. It’s all complimentary, and easy to soak up.
“Final Decay”, Home Blitz From All Through the Year (2020, Sophomore Lounge)
As we have established multiple times here, garnering comparisons to Game Theory—as Daniel DiMaggio’s Home Blitz has—is a surefire way to get the attention of the author of this blog. Although this comparison is warranted (more on that later), “Final Decay” is probably not the best example of that side of DiMaggio. What we have here is a lo-fi, drum machine-and-bass-led number with a genuinely dancefloor-ready chorus and a spoken-word-breakdown bridge, all coming together to make a perfect pop song (that’s #2 so far). Sounds kind of like if 1990s-era Of Montreal tried to make a song that sounded like 2010s-era Of Montreal.
“Storming in Memphis”, Tucker Riggleman & the Cheap Dates From Alive and Dying Fast (2021, WarHen)
In my review of Alive and Dying Fast, I wrote that “Storming in Memphis” was “lilting shuffle travelogue” that “recall[s] the songwriting of fellow traveler William Matheny, but while Matheny’s best recent moments find him looking back with a new-found clarity, Riggleman paints himself as a man very much still in the middle of it all, and still feeling everything as if it’s just happened to him”. Like “Truck Stop” earlier on the playlist, this is another classic “asking big and existential questions while the shitty-food-and-caffeine-addled mind wanders in a way that only the open road can allow” song. Memphis—where Big Star languished in obscurity and The Replacements made their strongest bid not to do so—is anything but a random mid-sized U.S. city to invoke, especially considering another song on the same album is effectively a tribute to Paul Westerberg.
“Letter to Memphis”, Pixies From Trompe le Monde (1991, 4AD)
I do distinctly remember saying the Pixies were overrated a few months ago, when I was in an agitated mood. Politifact has rated this statement as “mostly false”—perhaps I should have been more accurate and gone with “Bossanova and Surfer Rosa are varying degrees of overrated, I never need to hear ‘Where Is My Mind?’ ever again, Doolittle is more or less as good as people say it is, and Trompe le Monde has actually become underrated somehow”. It’s a weird one, but “Letter to Memphis” is a crowd-pleaser—it’s the Pixies at their glam-pop-punk best. The Breeders are still better, though.
“Maria”, Steve Earle & The Dukes From J.T. (2021, New West)
In a Rolling Stone piece about the late Justin Townes Earle that came out a couple weeks ago, it details a moment early in Justin’s career where Steve hears his son’s band play a then-unreleased “Maria” and mistakes it for an Elvis Costello song, which of course flatters Justin. In J.T., the elder Earle’s moving tribute to his son recorded in the months after his tragic death, Steve really leans into the Costellian power pop aspects of “Maria” compared to the more subdued version Justin eventually released on Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now. I imagine this country-rock version (which sounds like The Dukes as much as it does The Attractions, despite the obvious influence) is closer to how it came off live, which seems appropriate. J.T. is above all else a celebration, and “Maria” is its most jubilant moment.
“Double Ono”, Subtitles From Commoner (2021, self-released)
I don’t really know much about Subtitles other than they’re apparently from New Jersey, but I stumbled onto Commoner this month and it gets a thumbs up from me. It’s a perfectly solid 20-minute mini-album that shades its underdog IndieRock with punk, emo, and alt-country in various spots. “Double Ono” is a rocker, a nervous-sounding stomp that really erupts in the final minute (which is nearly half of the song’s 2:30 runtime).
“Fruitcake”, Subsonic Eye From Nature of Things (2021, Middle Class Cigars)
I called “Fruitcake” “pure guitar pop” in my writeup of Nature of Things, which is not a descriptor I would dispute with a few weeks of hindsight. Most of the song features treadmill-speed bass plucking and frantic guitar strumming that occasionally contorts itself into a jangling sound, but neither ever get in the way of lead singer Wahida’s vocals. The feel that the Singaporean band gives the instrumentation compliments the song’s urgent, repetitive lyrics. It’s an intriguing character study (“She’s a trainwreck / Nailed to ideas” and “She’s walking like that / With the devil in her eyes”) that Wahida sells with the right mix of melancholy and energy.
“Six Flags America”, Mister Goblin From Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is theDevil (2021, Exploding in Sound)
There is a Six Flags not too far from where I’m living these days. It’s not the titular Six Flags America, located in Largo, Maryland, but I was never a Rollercoaster Kid (traumatic log flume incident and all that) so I couldn’t really tell you the difference. Still, the loops and slides rising off in the distance from the interstate is always a sight to behold. Mister Goblin, the solo project of Sam Woodring, formerly of the underrated Two Inch Astronaut, seems to share none of my amusement park-based reservations, however. My personal feelings don’t get in the way of me enjoying “Six Flags America”—whatever muse Mr. Goblin needs to follow to bring songs like this out of him is fine by me. It’s a beautiful acoustic ballad, enhanced by Sadie Dupuis’ vocals and Matt Gatwood’s cello playing. While most of my favorite Mister Goblin moments thus far had been easier to trace back to the pop-punk-post-hardcore-etc of Two Inch Astronaut (like the excellent “Calendar Dogs” from 2019’s Is Path Warm?), “Six Flags America” is a strong argument for another dimension of Woodring’s songwriting.
“Waiting in Line”, Kiwi Jr. FromCooler Returns(2021, Sub Pop)
There is something oddly pleasing to me about a band taking the most immediately pleasing, catchiest song on their album and sticking it dead last in the tracklist. I realize that streaming and the internet and whatnot have made this a much less bold move, but it appeals to a certain part of me—contrarian, self-sabotaging, difficult, whatever you’d like to call it. Regardless of its position on Cooler Returns, however, there’s nothing difficult about “Waiting in Line”. It’s pure pop, and it’s no accident. Every short guitar fill, keyboard blast, the clap-along-fuck-you drumbeat, the “You-hoo-hoOOoo” in the chorus, the just-the-right-length outro—all of this is scientifically designed to make this song as hooky and catchy as possible. Cooler Returns showed that Kiwi Jr. is more than just a party band, but for 3 minutes and thirty seconds you have to wonder what would be so wrong about that anyway.
“Blunt Force Concussion”, The Dirty Nil From Fuck Art (2021, Dine Alone)
I’ve talked about “perfect pop songs” already on this playlist. Here we have Canadian punk/hard rockers The Dirty Nil, who have given me no choice but to give this label to their “Blunt Force Concussion”, which is against all odds probably my favorite song of 2021 so far. When you’ve got a hook as strong as this song does, you have given yourself a certain amount of leeway in how you put the rest of it together. You can grab some easy rhymes. You can go full snotty pop-punk dude and sing about how you’re absolutely fucking terrified of commitment but you’ve still got feelings too, you promise. You can assume rock and roll band posture while putting a sheen over everything that’d make the most radio-ready top 40 single blush. Hell, you probably should do all this, because I can’t imagine “Blunt Force Concussion” working any other way. Also, they called their album Fuck Art and released it on New Year’s Day—it’s hard not to admire these guys on some level.
“Retainer”, Fuvk From Imaginary Deadlines (2021, Z Tapes)
In my Imaginary Deadlines writeup, I said “Retainer” “begins humbly and lo-fi only to evolve into a roaring alt-rocker in its second half”. Other than a brief instrumental interlude towards the end, Shirley Zhu is tearing through confessional lyrics, singing nonstop for nearly the full three minutes. Her unwavering vocals anchor the song as it evolves from an acoustic number and more and more instrumentation joins in the mix, leading to the aforementioned cathartic, roaring ending and a near-acapella epilogue. The music rises to the occasion provided by Zhu’s tormented lyrics—or, perhaps, the other way around.
“The Pearl”, Lorenzo Wolff and Bartees Strange From Down Where the Valleys Are Low: Another Otherworldfor Judee Sill (2021, StorySound)
Judee Sill is a big blind spot for me, I will admit. Frankly, I still haven’t stopped confusing her with Julee Cruise. Producer Lorenzo Wolff, with help from a red-hot Bartees Strange, seems intent on changing this, however, as he’s got a whole-ass Sill cover album coming out in March. Wolff and Strange give the song a soul-rock stomp, a pretty big change from the orchestral folk of the original version (which I went and listened to just for this post). Perhaps this radical reimagining would be blasphemous if I were a folkie with a strong previous attachment to Judee Sill and Heart Food, but with no pre-conceived notions going into either, I can safely say I prefer the new version. Not to say that I dislike Judee’s version, however—the strings don’t do much for me but once the banjo kicks in I see the appeal.
“The Curse”, Mekons From The Curse of the Mekons (1991, A&M)
I usually cite the Mekons’ first decade after reforming (1985 to 1994) as their “golden age”, but ’91’s The Curse of the Mekons, lacking a cohering theme or big single, has always been the one I spent the least time with from that era. This is not going to be a full album review, but after giving it some time on the occasion of its 30th anniversary coming up later this year, I can safely say: it’s good, folks. Maybe not quite as good as I Heart Mekons or Fear and Whiskey, but, you know, what is? Plus, it has this very excellent opening and title track, a woozy, accordion-heavy mug-raiser of a tune that’s the Mekons at their folk-punk best (actually meaning folk sensibilities mixed with punk instrumentation, not whatever the hell it means now).
“All Around You”, Joensuu 1685 From ÖB (2020, GEMS)
Joensuu 1685 is a Finnish band featuring members who have collaborated with Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug, and there is a clear Wolf Parade/Krug/Moonface/Sunset Rubdown influence on their music, particularly in singer Mikko Joensuu’s vocals. “All Around You”, however, doesn’t directly harken to any of Krug’s esoteric compositions, preferring to trade in the kind of wide-open, heartland synthpop that’s more frequently explored by the other prominent member of Wolf Parade, Dan Boeckner. The song is based off what is basically a carnival ride keyboard riff, the kind of beat that actually does make you want to get up and move, and an unabashed, joyful “I’m gonna wrap myself around you” chorus (subbing in “arms” and “heart” for “self” in later lines).
“Part of Me Crying”, This Is Lorelei From Jimmy Buffett Tape (2021, self-released)
Water from Your Eyes’ Nate Amos is back barely a month after his last EP with another short, sweet collection of pop songs under his This Is Lorelei moniker. The minute-and-change “Part of Me Crying” is my favorite from Jimmy Buffett Tape, although the whole thing is worth a listen. Built around a nice, fuzzy riff, the song manages to pack a surprising amount in its brief runtime. We’re off to the races immediately with “You know you know how to take my face off” as the opening line, and Amos doesn’t let up from there.
“Coming Soon”, Matthew Sweet FromCatspaw(2021, Omnivore)
Catspaw stands out most prominently among Matthew Sweet’s increasingly impressive discography due to its full embrace of the classic-AOR-era-guitar heroics that had always been an undercurrent of Sweet’s work, and in this particular arena “Coming Soon” does not disappoint. Why this song in particular gets the playlist nod over the others, however, is the pop songwriting which allows “Coming Soon” to stand arm-in-arm with career highlights such as “Sick of Myself” and “Evangeline”. Sweet isn’t messing around from the opening “You’ve arrived to bring about the end of the world / I’m about to make you mine”, and spends the rest of the 2:30 effectively fighting the lead guitar for the listener’s attention with a stately vocal melody and lyrics that suggest something higher-concept that your run-of-the-mill love song. Even if Sweet ultimately intended it as such, the best ones (like this one) find new grooves to try out and questions to ask.
“The Diner”, Dan Wriggins From Dent / The Diner (2021, Orindal)
Dan Wriggins has spent the last half-decade fronting the Philadelphia alt-country band Friendship, who have released a handful of excellent records (including 2017’s Shock Out of Season, which would be on the shortlist for my album of the last decade). I could’ve chosen either side of Wriggins’s debut solo single for this playlist, but there’s something about the way he sings “The Diner” that resonated with me in particular. The way Wriggins strains and reaches for the final “Like when youuuu were hanging with meeeee” towards the end of the song is reminiscent of his role in Friendship’s greatest moments, like the chorus of “Skip to the Good Part”. There are excellent little instances like this throughout the song—you can practically hear him ruefully shaking his head while singing “You got excited telling me a story / And I was feeling it”. Wriggins has just announced his debut solo EP coming out next month, and even though this song isn’t technically on it, it’s definitely got me anticipating it.
“Sleepyhead”, Camp Trash From Downtiming (2021, Count Your Lucky Stars)
In my writeup of Downtiming, I said “The ‘Hey Jealousy’ intro of ‘Sleepyhead’ gives way to a troubling and surreal scene that nevertheless doesn’t get in the way of that driving, anthemic chorus”. In the weeks since that, “Sleepyhead” has remained my favorite from that EP, although (perhaps because?) I still have many unanswered questions about what’s exactly going on here. In whose lawn are the three dead boys? Is this part of the vision mentioned earlier, or is this really happening? “Life’s much harder when you’re feeling out constant control or lack thereof”, despite (perhaps because?) being hard to parse, seems to be the thesis of the song. Truthfully, I’m not really trying to figure this out on my average listen, mostly just letting them hooks wash over me.
“Corner Store”, Palberta From Palberta5000 (2021, Wharf Cat)
This is not the Girlpool song of the same name, although there is a certain similar charm between the two. While that particular song feels the need to temper its bitter-sweetness with an abrasive middle instrumental, however, the Palbertan Corner Store goes for broke much like Palberta5000 did as a whole. Those excellent harmonies I mentioned in “Summer Sun” are back again, not only accenting the lead vocals but adding a whole alternate dimension to the song for most of its runtime. I’m not sure if there’s more going on in the background here than in “Summer Sun”, but the slower tempo and longer length (two and a half whole minutes!) give one a chance to appreciate them just a little bit more.
“I’ve Never Been to Africa (And It’s Your Fault)”, SwampDogg From Surfin’ in Harlem (1991, Volt)
Even if all that I said about Surfin’ in Harlem earlier—it being underrated within Mr. Dogg’s discography and aging particularly well and whatnot—wasn’t true, it would still have justified its existence easily just by virtue of having “I’ve Never Been to Africa (And It’s Your Fault)” on it. Built on the foundation of a killer piano riff and bolstered by some insistent saxophone playing in its latter half, the song pulls no punches musically. But this is somehow, as you may have gathered from the song title, not even the focal point of the track, but rather merely background pieces to the lyrics, which find Swamp Dogg at his angriest and most Afrocentric (which is saying something!). In a 2021 in which the richest person in the world is a white man from South Africa, some of the most “of the time” lyrics from the song actually might be as relevant as ever.
“The Driver (Pt. 1)”, Terry Reid From The Driver (1991, Warner UK)
This short, entirely acoustic interlude is the best 45 seconds on The Driver, an album that is deeply fascinating but also just as deeply marred by unfortunate late 1980s production choices. Terry Reid, aka “Superlungs”, does his best to single-handedly carry this album with his voice over gated reverb and weepy synths, but I keep coming back to this beautiful English ballad and thinking about what could have been instead. If such production techniques don’t scare you off (and they really better not, because it’s one of the most egregious offenders I’ve heard and I have a decent tolerance) there’s a cheesy, full-length “Pt. 2” at the end of the album as well.
“Heaven Beats Iowa”, Cub Scout Bowling Pins From Heaven Beats Iowa (2021, Guided by Voices, Inc.)
Title track from Robert Pollard’s latest side-project, recorded with the other members of the current Guided by Voices lineup. In my Heaven Beats Iowa writeup, I said “[These] six tracks have a kind of muddier and less formal feel to them than the last few proper GBV albums, with Pollard’s vocals being buried a bit in the mix. It feels, in spirit, kin to Guided by Voices’ mid-90s kitchen sink EPs, but sonically it reminds me most of 2019’s slapdash, recorded-on-tour-buses-and-hotels Warp and Woof.” “Heaven Beats Iowa” the song is the most pure pop of the bunch, guided by a sugary organ part and some tastefully chugging power chords. It’s one of the simpler song structures for a prominent Pollard number in awhile, and his vocals take a backseat, content to let the shiny instrumentation do the heavy lifting in the verses, but turning up just in time do deliver a classic refrain.
“Darkness on the Face of the Earth”, Willie Nelson From Teatro (1998, Island Def Jam)
Oh, uh, I’m a Willie Nelson person now. This happened at some point in January, not sure when exactly. I spent a good deal of time with his half-dozen or so most well-regarded albums in the first half of the month, and they’re all varying degrees of greatness. It’s the stuff that should get shoved under the nose of those saying they like “every kind of music but country”. It’s hard to choose just one song to represent all this because Willie’s songs—and I mean this in the best way possible—start to blur together if you listen to enough of them in a row. “Darkness on the Face of the Earth” (and a lot of 1998’s Teatro, for that matter) stuck with me, however. There’s a real simple, effortless excellence to Willie’s best songs, and this one (a confident re-recording of a song from his early years) is a good an exemplar as any. She left him and now the entire world is dark. Maybe he’s just in Alaska?
“In Your Head”, Kendra Smith From Five Ways of Disappearing (1995, 4AD)
On its surface, “In Your Head” is pretty straightforward. It’s a 90s pop-alt-rock released on 4AD that’s equal parts slacker and dreamy, and it is in the same conversation as something that would be written by a Deal or Tanya Donnelly. Kendra Smith, however, didn’t take the conventional path that led to “In Your Head”. She spent the 80s jumping from cult band to cult band—she was the bassist for The Dream Syndicate when they made their canonical Paisley Underground/psychedelic debut album, did a stint in supergroup Rainy Day (featuring a couple Bangles, as well as members of Game Theory, The Three O’Clock, and The Rain Parade), and teamed up with the late David Roback in Opal (who replaced her with Hope Sandoval after her departure, changed the band’s name to Mazzy Star, and the rest is history). Somehow, Five Ways of Disappearing was the only album she ever made under her own name—she’s out of music now mostly, which is a shame considering how worthwhile this album is. Not all of this album is as accessible as “In Your Head” (peep “Bohemian Zebulon” if you’d rather go the other way) but for four minutes we’re left to ponder: Mazzy Star, The Breeders, Veruca Salt—why not Kendra Smith?
“The Freed Pig”, Sebadoh From III (1991, Homestead)
You can’t ever accuse Lou Barlow of holding anything back. There’s a part in the Dinosaur Jr. chapter of Our Band Can Be Your Life which talks about how Barlow would intentionally be obnoxious and uncomfortable toward J. Mascis due to some sort of cocktail of anxious, insecure young man emotions and lack of coping mechanisms. It’s illuminating, but also unnecessary, because Barlow had already penned this song in 1991 that basically admitted it all. “You were right / I was battling you, trying to prove myself” starts it off, and Lou elaborates with “I’m self-righteous and rude…tapping ‘til I drive you insane”. Like many Sebadoh songs it’s absolutely brutal towards its author, but there’s an undercurrent of “you’re no better than I am” towards the song’s subject that indicates self-awareness shouldn’t necessarily be conflated with healing and self-improvement. Of course, the song is fantastically-written—before entering the weed-, distortion-, and Eric Gaffney-laced terrordome of III, we get one classic boilerplate-setting alt-rock anthem from Lou that reminds us that we shouldn’t take for granted his influence, for better or worse, over so much music I cover here.
“Night Star”, Squitch FromLearn to Be Alone (2020, Disposable America)
I think it would accurate to describe “Night Star” as a “ditty”. While the majority of Learn to Be Alone is interested in mathy guitar parts and off-kilter structures, with this one Squitch repurpose the main riff as a foundation to build a more conventional (relatively) pop rocker. This is another example of a band sticking their catchiest song at the close of their record, but it has an air of finality to it that gives it weight as the capper. Makes sense for a group making an album called Learn to Be Alone would like to leave the listener with a rumination on just that. And I do say “rumination” rather than “condemnation” or “endorsement”—anyone can make an anthem out of bold proclamations, but it’s more impressive to do the same with more hesitant and nuanced emotions.
“We’ll Ride in Your Car”, Dave Scanlon From Pink in Each, Bright Blue, Bright Green (2021, Whatever’s Clever)
In my Pink in Each, Bright Blue, Bright Green writeup, I wrote that “We’ll Ride in Your Car” is “a beautifully straightforward slowcore ballad that would be an attention-grabber anywhere”. Like a lot of that album, it’s a very sparse composition, almost entirely made up of Scanlon’s gentle vocals and his minimal, barely-more-than-root-note guitar picking. Combine that with its romantically evocative lyrics (“And let God decide / If buttons stay buttoned / If shoulders stay clothed”) and you have a pop song stripped to its barest essentials.
“9 Times a Week”, We Are Joiners From Clients + Carriers (2020, Totally Real)
Dutch lo-fi pop rockers We Are Joiners split the difference between cacophonic and melodic here, outfitting “9 Times a Week” with crowd-pleasers such as a sweet vocal melody, tasteful acoustic guitar, and whistling, but then throwing it through a funhouse mirror of 8-track production and loud percussion. They back up their musical dichotomy lyrically as well—“9 Times a Week” name-drops both the Minutemen and “Frankie Says Relax”. It’s reminiscent of the most recent J. Marinelli album, which is high praise in my book. Clients + Carriers is the band’s debut of sorts—it’s a compilation of the two EPs to their name thus far (Clients, and Carriers) in a single place, as a stopgap before their true first album. Not streaming, but it is name your price on Bandcamp, so no excuses.
“Highlights of 100”, Kiwi Jr. From Cooler Returns (2021, Sub Pop)
I think “There’s been a specter haunting Texas ever since they drank whiskey on the moon” was the moment I realized I was fully on board with Cooler Returns. “Waiting in Line” might be the more well-constructed number of the two Kiwi Jr.’s on the playlist, but “Highlights of 100” best “highlights” what really works about the album as a whole. It finds the Canadians in full-on carnival barker mode, being handed one line of the song on a notecard, reading it out through the megaphone, ripping the paper up and grabbing the next one before we get the chance to process the images we just got thrown at us. Was that an intentional Taylor Swift lyric reference? Were they calling back to their first album with the line about the swimming pool? Did he just say “Sixteen terabytes of land, with asterisk and ampersand”?
“What We Wore”, Home Blitz From All Through the Year (2020, Sophomore Lounge)
“Final Decay” was Home Blitz’s deconstructed pop-dancefloor number, and the 62-second “What We Wore” is more-or-less straightforward jangly dB’s/Game Theory homage piece from All Through the Year. The brevity is probably the most subversive thing about this song—Daniel DiMaggio could have stretched this one out a bit more, and perhaps it would’ve been had it been conceived and recorded at a time when it would’ve had some college radio currency, I.R.S. Records breathing down the auteur’s neck for a “single”. Not in this universe, where it’s merely one of the four horsemen of a 12”. I went with this one over the 9-minute “Real Green” from the same record but that one’s pretty damn impressive too.
“Monolith”, The Chills From Scatterbrain (2021, Fire)
My partner upon hearing this song commented that it “sounds old” and was shocked to hear it’s from an upcoming album this year. They were onto something with that comment, though—there is an ageless/timeless quality to Martin Phillipps’s voice and in the rollout for the other advance single from Scatterbrain (the aptly-titled “You’re Immortal”), he cited Love’s Forever Changes, a similarly unmoored creation, as a major influence. While I would just be happy with the idea of a new Chills album every three years (which has been our blissful reality since 2015’s Silver Bullets), the vaguely dark and mysterious girding conjured by the driving instrumentation and Phillipps’s high-priest lyrics suggests they’re shooting for something as affecting as “Pink Frost” thirty-five years later.
“Alive and Dying Fast”, Tucker Riggleman & the Cheap Dates From Alive and Dying Fast (2021, WarHen)
The title track to Alive and Dying Fast finds Tucker Riggleman and his Cheap Dates at a low point, perhaps the lowest on the record. The song starts with Riggleman reflecting on being in what seems like a rut, but the song then becomes a chronicle of that moment when, finding yourself in that rut, you start probing to see how deep in it you can go: “This week has kicked me in the ass” quickly morphs into “I don’t know how I can survive” and “I’m too fucked up” before “Alive and Dying Fast” runs its course. In the context of the entire album, it’s key time spent in the doldrums before one final push towards the “Alive” end of the record title, but taken on its own it’s some cathartic wallowing.
“Will”, Cicala From Cicala (2021, Acrobat Unstable)
I am a sucker for good use of “catty-corner” in a song, and Cicala delivers effortlessly on this song. Thematically, “Will” is practically the sequel to the aforementioned “Truck Stop”, although it’s a bit more down to Earth and closer to home. Nevertheless, we still meet a narrator using driving and automobiles as escapism (“I never felt more alive in a parking lot” and “I don’t need to feel everything I did” are twin candidates for the thesis of Cicala). In this case, it’s a van that needs to be fixed and the state line that just might be the antidotes. Also, the titular “Will” seems to be the verb rather than the name or the noun, which is a fun twist.
“Car Wash Hair – Full Pull”, Mercury Rev From Car Wash Hair (1992, Mint Films/Jungle)
Originally encountered by me as the hidden track to 1991’s Yerself Is Steam, but submitted here as the single version for ease of listening. I do not have any Mercury Rev hot takes—I like them, they’re not my favorite band or anything and I’ve only heard their two most notable albums (Steam and Deserter’s Songs) in full, but they’re both pretty solid to my ears. Like anyone else who’s heard both their wild psych early material and shiny indie pop late 90s work, I find it hard to believe that the same band made both—which is partially because, of course, they more or less had become a different band by 1998. “Car Wash Hair”, however, is a harbinger of the friendlier material to come despite appearing on Rev’s free-for-all of a debut album. There are some guitar squalls, to be sure, but the draw here is the simplistic refrain, and the mostly tasteful instrumentation (Horns! Acoustic strumming!) that adorns it.
Rosy Overdrive 